Blue World Order – Chapter 2: Cleaver
FOUR YEARS AGO:
Dr. Marion Conners sat opposite a much larger man. A grotesque man. The metal table between them didn’t provide enough distance for Marion’s liking, but it was the only place in the facility in which she was able to conduct these tests. It was the only place the test subjects could be…dealt with, should the test fail.
The overhead light hung loosely on a cord which wound its way up through the piping to the roof above. The bulb swayed gently, giving a hint of some passage of air here far below the surface. Light danced across the large man’s face. His pitted cheeks casting tiny crater-like shadows that grew and shrank in the light. His blank eyes stared straight ahead, but his hands trembled.
Marion faced the man and lifted her clip-board. She reached around and hit the record button on a small handy-cam that sat behind her and stated the facts:
‘Ok, we’re on.. so… this is test subject X one one nine. Inhibitor block six fourteen, trial 5.’
With this, Marion spun and looked across the dimly lit room. She gave a slight nod to an assistant in a white lab coat who stood nearby. The slim asian girl looked nervously back at Marion before slipping around behind the large man and finding a pre-prepared wooden board. On it lay a blood red capsicum. The assistant shuffled around to place the board in front of the man who wore nothing more than a blue hospital gown. She slid the board across the table and stepped back.
A vegetable rocked and rolled slowly, before settling once again. She waited as the man’s hands continued to twitch as they rested on the table in front of him. But it was not his hands that made her nervous, rather what sat on the table next to them.
Catching the reflections of the overhead light sat a large, sharp, meat cleaver.
The assistant swallowed. Marion spoke.
‘Take the cleaver, and strike the object.’
With eyes desperately removed from what was happening, the man’s trembling hand reached and clasped the wooden handle of the metal blade. Without pausing, he raised the cleaver high above his head and slammed it down on the wood before him, slicing the capsicum neatly in two. The sound echoed like a gunshot, but the man didn’t flinch.
With slow, jerking movements, the patient placed the cleaver back where it had lay and continued his vacant stare. Marion made notes on her clip-board, writing quickly without lowering her eyes. When she gave her signal, it was barely perceptible, but the assistant needed nothing more. Within a few seconds, the board with the cleft capsicum was replaced by a new wooden board. This one contained a perfect circle of camembert cheese – the kind with a soft centre.
‘Take the cleaver, and strike the object.’
It seemed to take just a fraction of a second before the man’s hand reacted. It drifted forward, clasped the handle, and in one fast motion, raised and lowered the cleaver in a definitive swing. The wheel of camembert was split almost perfectly down the centre, the soft inner goo clinging to the blade as it was placed clanking back on the table. The man’s eyes never wavered and Marion looked into them deeply. The neurologist wrote in the appropriate spaces, and ticked the appropriate boxes on the form before her.
When she finished, she lowered her eyes for just a moment, and looked at her skin in the dim green light. The creamy brown appeared a sickly grey. A trick of the light, or touched by all the death that she had witnessed in this very room?
Dr. Marion Conners looked up once again, breathed, and nodded to her assistant. A moment later, a third wooden board was placed in front of the hulking patient. On this board, with long floppy ears, sat an inquisitive puppy.
The assistant soothed the animal and made it sit with some gentle coaxing. Soft whimpers broke the silence and echoed as the assistant stepped back and looked pleadingly at the doctor.
‘Take the cleaver, and strike the object.’
The pause seemed to take just a little longer this time, but when the patient’s hand moved, it was just as swift as it had been with the previous two iterations. His right hand grasped the cleaver tightly and raised it high above his head, higher than before, as if aware that the impact would need to be greater.
Light streaked across the blade as the cleaver flashed downwards. The assistant turned away, unable to watch. At the moment of impact, Marion involuntarily closed her eyes.
But the impact never came.
Marion breathed. Her eyes remained shut. It took just a moment to register that there had been no almighty BANG as the clever struck the wooden chopping board. Nor any wet sound smothering the cracking bones as the puppy was cut in two.
As Marion breathed out, she allowed her eyes to open. Staring back at her were the vacant eyes of patient One One Nine. His head cocked to the side slightly, his expression still blank. His right arm was extended and contained the vicious looking cleaver… hovering just off the table. With a long, slobbering tongue, feasting on the remnants of the camembert cheese that still clung to the blade, was the small, excited puppy.
Marion scribbled furiously onto her notepad. The man’s hand shook as if possessed, but his eyes never faltered; but in those eyes, something was happening. Orbs were rotating subtly.
Small.
Digital.
Rings upon rings slid past each other, connected and then slid again. Deep below the cornea, from somewhere towards the back of his eye, a soft blue light pulsed – giving evidence that the man wasn’t acting completely of his own volition.
Marion reached down to her clip board and tore off the top sheet. She nodded to her assistant and handed the girl the paper.
‘This one,’ she said, returning her gaze to the man before her.
‘This is it. It’s ready.’
