TRAPPED

19

"Okay, I'll call someone," Sal said, while shaky fingers opened the lock screen of her phone.

She punched in the emergency number and got the beep, beep, beep of a busy line. She paced up and down nervously, looking at the unconscious Ronny sprawled on the floor, and tried again; beep, beep, beep. Tried again with a different number, same result: beep, beep, beep.

She turned to Kendra, who was standing beside the shell-shocked bro, gently rubbing his back.  He sat on the floor, face buried deep in his knees, hands clenched tightly around his legs, rocking back and forth. Bleary eyed, he stared at the bodies of his friends, the towels slowly soaking up blood, looking like strawberry Rorschach tests. "Can I have your phone, K?" Sally said with an extended arm. Kendra handed her the phone.

"Guys, do me a favor, can you check your phones and tell me if any of you have a signal?"

One by one, they took out their phones.

"Mines dead."

"Nope."

"Nada."

"Mine's dead too."

The bro on the floor increased the swaying. Kendra removed her hand from his back and panned her head from one corner of the gym to the other. But it was not what she saw that caught her attention, it was what she did not hear. She got up, took Sam's phone and sniffed at it. Burned, she thought and walked over to the front desk, leaned over the counter and reached for something behind it. Her hands found what they were supposed to find without her looking. You heard a few clicks of what must have been light switches.

"Ha!" The short remark seemed to confirm what she was thinking.

"What is it?" Sal asked impatiently.

Kendra raised her hand, asking for a moment of patience, her eyes now fixed on the front door. She walked over, grabbed the door handle and gave it a few good shakes. The door didn't open. The space between her eyes frowned, a sign that she was thinking hard, her way of squeezing an idea into a working hypothesis. The lines grew even deeper as she rejoined the party. 

"You want to tell us what's going on in that beautiful head of yours?" Sal said.

"EMP," Kendra said absently and passed the phone back to Sam. He sniffed at it puzzled and turned it over a few times in his hand. 

No one said a word, she had to give the gang a little more than that.

"The phones are fried, there's no music coming over the speakers, the lights won't come on, and the entrance is locked." She sighed and the glabella lines deepened further, she lowered her head and tapped her foot to a non-existent beat. "There was this burst of light, a shock wave, like a lightning strike, and that might have damaged the electronics, the wiring, the door." Kendra stopped and looked for any reaction of the group, but it was still not enough. "But when it comes to that," she nodded at the two dead bodies, "beats me. That's all I got."

"That would explain the what," Sam said, "but what about the why?"

"Does that really matter right now?" Sally remarked.

"I don't know, but it might help us figure out what happens next," Sam countered, crossing his arms over his chest, making his massive arms look even bigger.

"This is not one of your war zones, Sam." Sally said unimpressed.

Sam took a deep breath and took a long hard look at the two soaking red towels, "But it sure looks like one.

"Guys, guys, guys, that's not going to help us right now," Kendra defused the tension and continued, "Sal, is there any other way out besides the front door?"

Sally pointed her index finger at the ceiling, where eight skylights hung twenty meters high, letting in the warm light of the noonday sun, interrupted only by the steel mesh in front of them.

“Well shit,” Kendra proclaimed while resting her hands on her hips, “we’re trapped.”

The bro on the floor gagged a few times and emptied his stomach for what must have been a hearty breakfast.

20

"And what would you like, young man?" The man in the flannel shirt and leather apron asked Ron. He held a small notepad in one hand and a ground down pencil in the other. It was hard to tell if the pencil had been sharpened so many times that it had become a stump, or if the man's burly hands made it look small. Ron was captivated by this stocky, fifty-six-year-old man who, despite his small size, seemed to have infinite strength. Muscle upon muscle adorned his beefy body. But there was one thing that was not adding up, this man everyone called Ziggy had been dead for over ten years. And that must have made Ron what? Fifteen, sixteen?

"Trout, please." Ronny said shyly. 

"Very good. Very good choice." Ziggy scribbled down the order, his lips moving slowly with the writing, revealing that he would never write a novel, let alone read one. 

He scooped up the menus from the table and trotted off to a small makeshift kitchen where Elga was preparing the side dishes of baked potatoes and salad. Ziggy put the menus down, tore the page off the notepad and placed it, sticky side down, on the door to the kitchen. He walked around Elga, who was washing a fresh head of lettuce, grabbed her by the waist, gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek, and whispered something in her ear. She pushed him away and turned, holding up her index finger and pursing her lips, scolding the five-year-old troublemaker in him. He kissed her finger and she smacked him on the chest with a wet tea towel; they both began to snicker. She hustled him out of the hut with the wet rag. Then she returned to cut the lettuce into small pieces, her quick hands filling four bowls and pouring homemade dressing over them. Skilfully, she took all four bowls and walked over to Ron's table.

"There you go, my dearies, freshly picked from our garden this morning. Ziggy is taking care of your fish, and Ronny, he said he wanted to show you something," Elga winked, "he's outside by the pools."

A cool autumn breeze swirled around Ron as he stepped out of the hut known to local people as The Hook & Plate. A giant wood-carved trout beamed down from its roof, greeting customers with a happy Reel 'em in and feast 'em up!

Ron zipped up his jumper, pulled the hoodie over his head and marched around the corner with his hands in the kangaroo pocket. His feet plowed through a thick layer of dried yellow and brown chestnut leaves. A faint smell of decay told him that summer was gone for good and that winter was knocking at the door. He shoved a shoe under a particularly large pile of leaves and shot his leg up, so that the leaves rained down on him. Satisfied, he hurled himself around the next corner with a Cashmere Cat grin on his face. When he saw Ziggy, he froze, the corners of his mouth pulling down slowly. A small gravel path separated them. Ziggy stood on the other side, a cleaver in one hand while the other pressed a wriggling fish onto a chopping block. The gravel path was flanked by two ponds, one to the left, one to the right, breeding ponds that provided the Hook and Platter with its main resource and were home to thousands of fish. 

"Ronny, my boy," Ziggy said without looking up as the cleaver came down thump! silencing the fish by separating its head from its body. 

Ron liked the old man, secretly admired him for his stature, his strength and grace, and his ability to make things with his hands. Ron's parents were academics, people of the mind, and if something broke, it was replaced or someone had to come and fix it. Ziggy, on the other hand, a MacGyver type of man, built The Hook & Platter with his bare hands and you can bet your sweet bippy that everything those two hands touched reeked of quality. But today there was something about him that made Ron uneasy. However, he told his legs to unfreeze and made his way to the old man. The fish got excited and swarmed over each other, making the breeding tanks look like a pot of boiling water. It was hard to tell where one fish began and the other ended; one big, nervous, slimy serpent trying to break free from its watery prison. He looked up and held his breath, and with quick strides he made it past the ponds. Pff! Pff! fart noises crept from his tight-pressed lips,  if you had held a needle to his cheeks they would have exploded with a devastating boom! 

"Ahhhhh! Uhhhhh! Ha!" Came out in three bursts and Ron slowly recovered his breath. He stood in front of Ziggy's brick wall of a back and watched as the man busied himself until, "Ah, there it is," he seemed to have struck gold.

There is what? Ron thought, suspecting nothing good.

"Here, hold this for a moment," Ziggy turned and placed a small red blob, no bigger than a walnut, in Ron's palm. It was warm, sticky and moved a jot. A smell of iron crawled up his nose.

"What's that?" He asked curiously, but immediately regretted the question and even more the fact that he had opened his hand. A dark premonition spread through him. He looked into Ziggy's grinning face in confusion, then past him to the chopping block and saw the gutted fish, its red contents spilling out onto the chopping block.

"It's a heart," Ziggy said, not hiding his delight.

Ron looked down and thought he was going to be sick, but he was fine, his stomach was holding up quite well. He just stood there with a pumping heart in his hand, as it tried desperately to fulfill its purpose.

"Why?" A faint voice came from the chopping block. 

Ziggy was gone. Gray cumulonimbus clouds darkened the sky and the wind picked up, bringing with it the distant rumble of an approaching thunderstorm. Ron walked cautiously toward the chopping block, closer to where the voice came from. Could it be the gutted fish? Nah! That's stupid, he thought.

"Ronny, why did you have to stop me from leaving?"

It was the fish! Jesus M. Night Shamalayan fuckin' Christ, a talking fish! Another rumble in the sky, closer this time, so close that Ron could feel it in his guts. The heart in his hand pumped faster as he hunched over the fish. It was gasping for air, or rather water, its lips slowly opening and closing.

"Why didn't you save me?" The zombie fish said in a familiar voice. There was the rumbling again. But this time it was not the thunderheads above the Hook & Plate, but the heart in Ron's hand. Every contraction and relaxation was accompanied by a bassy b-doom, b-doom. The fish turned its head and Ron looked into Alexa's face. A milky haze covered her eyes, the eyes of a dead person.

"I, I, I..." Ronny fumbled for words that would not come out.

B-doom! B-doom! The heart pounded and instead of the fish, it was Alexa's severed head resting on the woodblock.

"Why?" she said weakly, "why, why, why."  And closed her eyes as if falling asleep. 

The heart stopped and there was silence. A lightning flash illuminated the surreal scene where Ron felt the need to touch his beloved one last time. An outstretched hand with trembling fingers slowly approached her cheek. The forefinger sank into the gray-yellow skin. For a second, the world seemed to stand still. Then a crash of thunder! And with it, the heart in Ron's hand exploded. Alexa's eyes widened in shock and she let out an excruciating scream.  

The scream was so deafening that Ron had to cover his ears, smudging blood all over his face. The pitch increased, as did the volume of the scream, until Alexa's head burst open, spraying red gore and bone fragments all over the place.

21

The folks in the powerhouse were so preoccupied with their dire situation, that nobody paid any attention to what was going down in the reception area. The energy blast pushed a few protein powder packs from the shelfs, mounted behind the main desk. A package that advertised its contents with a nuclear logo and promised Mutant Mass lay broken open on the floor. A small creature, the size of a football, hunkered over it, inspecting the sweet protein-carb blend that smelled of cookies and cream. At first glance, the creature could have been mistaken for a naked rat that had been injured, as it appeared to have bloody lacerations all over its body. But if you had dared to take a closer look, you would have seen a strange-looking thing that defied all logic. Its body resembled a human brain, it was clearly made of the gray matter we associate with our thinking apparatus. But it was not merely a brain on four legs, it was marbled with muscle fibers and had a piranha-like mouth, with countless razor-sharp teeth gracing its gateway to hell. Its entire body was covered with a thin layer that allowed life essentials such as blood and cerebrospinal fluid to circulate through its body, and it had no eyes. A tongue lashed out from the piranha's mouth, dipped into the whey dune, quickly retreated, and circled the creature's lips twice, making it shriek in delight.

Two more creatures appeared out of nowhere. Just like that. Not as if they had been brought in by a Star Trek transporter beam, there was no swirling sound effect, no particles reassembling the body that had been disintegrated on the other side. They just appeared, curiously feeling out their excited compadre. Electrical jolts pulsed along its synapses, its muscle fibers vibrating at high frequency like piano wires, accelerating rapidly until it looked like a phone on vibracall jittering across a table. It stopped abruptly and stood still for a few seconds. The other two drew closer and shrieked as their friend suddenly grew a few centimeters in size. Then they jumped excitedly around their big brother, who thrust out a dark and heavy Grrrrrrrrr!

"Hey guys," came a voice from one of the nearby tanning booths. "I seem to be locked in, can someone please open the door?" Celery Kid's voice was accompanied by a few restrained knocks on the electrically locked security door.

The Brainiacs turned in unison in that direction and - was there a smile on their faces? They grinned devilishly at each other and, as mysteriously as they appeared, vanished without a sound and trace.

22

Celery Kid lay butt-naked in the tanning bed. The ultra-bright, high-pressure lamps made his skin look ash gray. The Area 51 look was completed with over-ear noise-canceling headphones and tanning goggles pinched on the bridge of his nose. Through those Super Sunnies he saw a digital counter in the door of the tanning bed, its red digits counting down the last minute of fake sun.

He did not tan for the western beauty standard associated with brown skin, but instead exposed his body, especially his scrotum, to high levels of UVA radiation in the hope that it would increase his testosterone levels. Along the way to manhood, he might find out that testicular tanning is supposed to work with red light, and not UV. And learn another hard fact: that it's total bull. But hey! Don't we all have our personal testicle tanning stories we wish were true? 

The lights went out and the air around him cooled. Like reverse Nosferatu, he opened the door of the sun coffin and slid out on his own sweat. He stood upright with his legs spread wide, brought both hands to his nutsack and rested his middle and ring fingers underneath. He took a deep breath and let out a long Oooohhhmmmm and began to gently slap his testis to further stimulate the production of androgens. After what seemed way too long to slap one's nuts, he put on his briefs and finished the ritual with a few sun salutations. Then he carefully whiped the tanning bed clean with an alcohol solution, and hit his head on the half-closed sunbed.

"Balls!" He said miffed, rubbing his head. He fetched his things, went for the door and rammed his shoulder into it.

"Balls, balls, balls! Annoyed, he rattled the doorknob, took off his headphones and put on a fake smile.

"Hey guys. I seem to be locked in, can someone please open the door?"

He knocked a few times and put his ear to the door to hear if anyone was around, but the security door blocked out any sound.

"Damn it! Fuckin... No! Calm your tits, Billy. There is no need to freak out. Breathe and count." He told himself, pacing from one side of the four-by-four meter room to the other.

Breathe in and count to five: One - Two - Three - Four - Five. Hold your breath and count to three: One - Two - Three. Then exhale and count to seven: One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven. And as you breathe, press your thumb against your fingers, one at a time, on each count. This will rob the fear of the attention it needs to exist, the therapist had told him. 

It helped a little, but the walls still came closer with each loop. Cleithrophopia, the fear of being trapped, the therapist had called it. 

"Two, three, four, dang it! Where was I?" 

It was hard to concentrate with all the distractions in his head. This will give you a sense of control and keep the panic at bay. And remember - you are the captain of the ship, the therapist added. 

Yeah, great, captain of the ship, he thought. But what if pirates have captured the ship and trapped you deep in its belly?

Images of Billy and his father flashed in his mind's eye as he was dragged down a driveway, struggling desperately.

And the pirates murdered your crew, wreaked havoc on the vessel, and then got bored and left.

Billy kicked his father in the shins, but the man didn't mind, holding his nine-year-old son in place with one hand. Like a crab, he jammed his hand into Billy's armpit. With the other hand, he fumbled with a set of keys and opened the trunk of his beige 1993 Renault 19.

The vile pirates, however, did not leave until they had made a hole in the ship's hull so small that it would take an eternity for it to sink.

Billy's father shoved him into the trunk and closed the lid with a loud bang. Billy kicked the trunk a few times, then fell silent and began to hyperventilate. His father straightened his shirt, which was hanging loosely from his pants from the struggle, and walked back into the house, whistling.

It's maddening not to know when you're going to drown/suffocate. But you will drown/suffocate - you can count on it.

"One, two, three, four, five. Hold it: One, two... What the...?" Billy stopped pacing and crouched down to get a closer look at what he thought was a very ugly dog blocking his way.

"Holy Mother of Christ. You are ugly!" He moved closer, wanting to touch the creature, but it disappeared before his fingers could reach it. A few moments passed before he remembered that he had a phobia to tend to. He got up, ready to count, when he felt a pinch in his left bicep.

"What now?!" He inspected his biceps, and saw one of the Cerebros hanging from his upper arm. "Oh no! You little fucker!" Its teeth sunk deep into the muscle, releasing a purple slime that melted the flesh while exuding a vapor of the same color.

"Ahhhhhhh!" A scream of agony squeezed through Billy's clenched teeth as he threw the leech against the wall and saw his biceps follow the same trajectory. The purple slime had softened the muscle tissue, making the muscle come off as easily as a fall-off-the-bone, crispy, baked chicken wing. There was not much blood loss because the slime also closed up the wound. So it was easy for Billy to swing his leg back and free kick the creature into oblivion. But he only kicked the air in front of him, because the Brainiac disappeared as soon as it saw the foot approaching, taking the biceps with it. Feverish eyes scanned the room, left to right, up and down, right to left again. It's gone, he thought, and in the next instant another Cerebro latched onto him. The left calf came off as easily as the biceps, sending Billy to his knees. The arm, no longer responding to his thoughts, dangled lazily like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, tic, toc, tic, toc. The creature moved the calf to the opposite corner and munched away happily. Billy thought, for a short moment, that it was grinning at him, probably contemplating the next body part it was going to rip off. And smack! The next pinch came from below. Another Cerebro, the largest of the trio, drilled into Billy's stomach, ripping open the abdominal wall and causing his intestines to fall out like a generous serving of spaghetti bolognese. The kind you see in commercials where they crank up the saturation to make the sauce redder than red. "Mama mia," Billy chuckled as he pulled his gut in fascination. He wanted to know if it's really true that a human intestine can be up to seven meters long. As he pulled and giggled and pulled and giggled, he did not realize that the first Cerebro was back for seconds and snaked down the left side of his face. He never found out if the gut story was true, because the creature opened its mouth, bit into his face and spat it out, and bit two more times until it exposed Billy's brain.

Billy, lay next to the tanning booth, picked clean, looking like a classroom skeleton. The Cerebros underwent their magical transformation: rainbow colors flashed across their synapses, muscle fibers flexed, and boom, the once rat-sized creatures grew to the size of a cocker spaniel. They horsed around the bag of bones for a while and puff, disappeared into thin air.