← Back Published on 29th July 2023

One Little Pill

Listen here, narrated by Kieran Regan: https://open.spotify.com/episo...

Just one little pill. That’s all they’d said — or, at least, that’s what the man with the kind eyes and the warm, brown suit had said. Just take this one little pill and stay in the office overnight, and he’d be able to make all those gambling debts go right away. My partner wouldn’t even need to know they’d ever existed; everything could go back to the way things were, before all the secrets and the lies and the late nights away, trying to find more money than I’d ever seen. No more days spent dreading the moment when enough would be enough and the ruse would fall apart and take our relationship with it. All because the cards had refused to fall right on the table on a night or two or three.

The kind man with the warm eyes had smiled at that. (He’d had a name — what was his name? Had he ever told me? He must have.) Yes, he could see to it that all of that was done easily. He had friends in high places who could fix everything with a snap of their fingers, with a flick of their wrist. And all it would take? All it would take was my signature on that dotted line right there, then twenty-four hours of my time — oh, and that one little pill, of course.

No, it wouldn’t hurt. No, nothing would harm me. I would be perfectly safe; I had his word. And then, everything would change.

It had seemed too good to be true. And “too good to be true” didn’t usually exist for people like me. So I had signed on the dotted line and promised to come back the next day and then came up with one last lie to tell my partner. (No more lies. No more deceptions. A line had to be drawn somewhere and it would be drawn right there, right in that moment.)

But the kind man hadn’t been there the next morning (today — had that only been today?) and instead, there had been a different man. The other man. The other man who also didn’t have a name but whose eyes didn’t know the meaning of warmth. The other man who had also been there the day before but hadn’t said anything, had just sat and stared, like he could see inside me and through me all at the same time. Searching and intense with the heat of a sun that’d been frosted over lifetimes ago.

I hadn’t wanted to look at him then, and the man hadn’t seemed to care. He still doesn’t, even now, leading me into a tall office building — one of thousands, exactly the sort I’d walked by countless times without a second thought. Up flights of stairs and down a long corridor, into a room filled with nothing but doors. Past one of the doors and into an even smaller room, walls smooth and white, floors carpeted with beige — and nothing else of note.

A prison cell? Was it? But, no … no, cells were for criminals, not for ordinary people with ordinary lives. Cells wouldn’t have a young woman (empty expression and empty eyes and nothing at all alive behind them) approaching the cold man, whispering flat words into his ear and dropping a small something into his hand. Cells weren’t right here, right in the middle of a big city, surrounded by hundreds of other ordinary people going about their ordinary days on the streets below.

And yet …

The woman disappears as fast as she’d appeared, and the man turns to me with his burning, freezing eyes, holding out the something that he’d been handed. Something small, white, and oblong, sitting ever so innocently in his palm.

Just one little pill.

And a prison cell.

And a woman with nothing behind her gaze and a man who apparently couldn’t feel.

“Take this. And sit there.” The words are hard, detached, tight — exactly what I would have expected, had I thought he’d speak at all. Does he even want to speak to me?

I know better than to ask, so I sit and push the pill past my lips and don’t say a thing. Just wait, and keep waiting. All while the man keeps watch and his expression doesn’t change, even when he opens his mouth to recite something that sounds too practiced to be anything but a script.

“You will be here for twenty-four hours. Food and water will be provided for you. Early leave will not be permitted, and the agreed-upon payment will be provided within seven days. Are there any questions?” Shake your head, don’t cause any problems, avoid the unknown wrath of a person who has shown nothing of human emotion. Only indifference, if that counted. But does that really count?

The man nods and turns, halfway through pulling the door shut. And he stops, gives me a last look, something that sends tremors down my skin far worse than the chilliest of his piercing looks. Something the complete opposite of the cold. (Confusion, indecision, uncertainty? Guilt? Except, no, that doesn’t make sense.) And gone again, replaced by the flat, uncaring, too-bright white of the door as it melded into the wall. No cracks, no bumps in the paint. No handle.

Maybe this is a prison after all — a prison for the body, a prison for the mind, but no prison like I’d ever imagined before. No bars to clutch at, no cobbled-together weapons hidden in the spaces between bricks, no glimpses of a world too far away to touch. No glimpses of an outside world at all.

Or maybe — just maybe — this is something worse than prison. An endless void of nothing at all. Emptied of anything good and bad and everything in between, without an end in sight. Except that this would have an end, wouldn’t it? Just one little pill, just twenty-four hours, and then all of it, this waking nightmare, would finally be over.

All that’s needed from me is to wait, and wait, and wait. Let the seconds and the minutes and the hours pass by. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Tick.

Tock.

But then there’s something … wrong. Something wrong with the clock in my head, because I can hear it. Even though — no, there’s no clock in this room, there’s no anything in this room, except for the white walls, except for me. And except for this clock that’s come from nowhere (but everything has to come from somewhere, things can’t come from nowhere, that’s not how the world works). It’s enough to bring me to my feet from where I’d been sitting, bring me towards the walls as I press my palms and ear against them, searching searching searching for sounds, vibrations, anything. Only the sound keeps moving, keeps flitting around, here one moment, then there the next. Suddenly nowhere for a moment, and then somehow everywhere, in every corner of the room. But still silent, so silent, wherever I try to listen, and I lose track of which sections of wall I’d already investigated.

Everything all the same, nothing to distinguish one wall from the next or the next or the next.

Until there is. Until there’s something new in the vast void of white: a peeling flap of fresh paint, the smallest imperfection in the pristine facade. (A facade? Was it a facade? A facade for what?) I don’t think, and I pull, and I watch. As the sliver of paint grows larger in my fingers, grows thicker with more and more layers pulled from the walls, keeps peeling away almost like it’s telling me to look look look.

Scratches, ripped deep into paint. Scratches, always hidden by another layer of white. Out of sight but not out of mind, because how could something like this ever be out of mind? Though the walls and the paint would remember, even if the people didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.

The cold man and his guilty eyes — did he remember? And if he remembered, then the kind man and his warm eyes — what about him? What was there to remember? To forget?

To ignore?

I run my fingers along the tearing, jagged edges, almost as if there’s something more there, something more for the walls to say if only walls really did have ears. Maybe if I just stay — just stay and listen to what the walls and the paint and the there-but-not-there clock have to say, then they could tell me the slippery terrible secrets of the cracks and tears in the pretty facade here. It would be so easy to wait; I have the time.

And then, the scratches — they move. The frayed edges wilt like the petals of a dying flower and the scratch widens into the gaping maw of some unknowable and untameable beast that wants to sink its paint-petal teeth into flesh and feast and consume until —

Stumble backwards and snatch your hand away and close your eyes. And breathe. And repeat over and over and over until the world makes sense again and there aren’t monsters in the wall. (Because the monsters aren’t in the wall. They’re somewhere else.) Gather your breath to the time of the ticking clock, collect yourself, open your eyes to the familiar and pristine white of the walls.

Except they aren’t familiar. They aren’t pristine, shedding countless flakes of paint like the one I’d peeled away, even though that isn’t possible, even though I’d run my hands along those walls and come away empty. Or … or had they been there all along? Had they been there and I’d never noticed? Could that be?

It’s beautiful and terrible, transfixing and morbid all in one. The strips continue to peel peel peel on their own, leaving gashes in the flesh-like stack of never-quite-dried paint layers, Floating and falling in a nonexistent wind, settling like fresh-fallen snow across the carpet. Melting like snow in the heat. But not like it at all. Not like snow turning to slush turning to water. More like … more like what?

Something wet slides and slips through my fingers, almost tumbles down and down even though this — it doesn’t feel like snow. Not cold and crystalline, but vaguely warm, pulsing with its own heartbeat. I look down in my hand, look down at the not-paint as it oozes across my palm, suddenly wet and sticky as my fingers sink into it.

Something like this — it can’t be possible. Something can’t just turn into something else in the space of a breath, in the blink of an eye. Except that it had; the paint is putty, the putty is flesh, the flesh is alive, and…

Alive?

Paint isn’t alive, putty isn’t alive, and the flesh shouldn’t be alive, except that the slime-covered lump in my hand begins wriggling and squirming and it’s all I can do to drop it to the floor and watch with eyes wide and heart racing. (Racing? Stopped? Does the difference matter anymore?) Watch as it crawls along the floor, constricting and contracting and constricting again, inching itself towards the other pieces of paint-flesh until they all press together into trembling masses that groan and deflate under the weight but still go on and on in their determined march toward the walls. But for what? What is it that’s in the walls?

The monsters in the walls the monsters in the walls (but there never were monsters in the walls. The monsters are … they’re somewhere else … aren’t they? Where are they?)

It’s only clear I’ve stepped backwards when I feel the cold flat white of the wall against my back, when it shifts and screams and stretches to lift the roof up and up and up and up. To make the room feel so big as I feel so small and the amorphous pieces of putty start to take shape and take on a voice.

Start to scream and whisper that there’s something to know. Something I need to watch, need to witness. Something too hard to put into words and had to be seen to be believed and nothing would be the same afterwards. And it holds me on a leash, freezes the air in my throat, stops time dead in its tracks. Look. Know. Understand.

Remember.

Yes. How could I say no?

I watch because I can’t not watch and the shapes aren’t just shapes anymore — they’re people. Or … not fully people. Not full people. Arms extending from the walls at odd angles — uncomfortable unnatural wrong — that shouldn’t be possible, elbows sticking out in lines too sharp to be human but too organic to be anything but, twisting and twisting together like two (three four five more and more) people linking themselves into one. Hands reaching out towards an unknown and unseen something, joints bent at extreme angles, contorting and convulsing and searching for … for what? They grasp at the air, a tangle of flailing, pale limbs without color or life or even the peace that everyone likes to think comes with death. They’re just things, without mind or motive or any of the qualities that make people into people but where did those things go? Were these bits and pieces of bodies people, once upon a long time ago? If they were, then what are they now? And if they weren’t, what were they in the first place?

I want to ask them about that and about the millions of other things that just don’t add up right but there’s a feeling in the air that’s just this side of wrong and it’s making the words stop working. Except that this monster in the walls can hear all of those little thoughts in my head that I hadn’t believed could be so loud, and then the arms and hands and fingers start a coordinated dance. Beckoning, inviting, mesmerizing, enchanting. Come, come, come closer and listen.

And so I do.

The arms and the hands glide across the walls like they’re not walls but instead the surface of a still lake, ripples flowing outward as they gather in a wide circle. Like some strange surreal painting of a pond except there is no color and the reeds are arms and the pond is actually just empty.

Until it isn’t. Until there’s a bubble that floats to the surface of the pond-not-wall that bursts with a heavy, thick pop. Then another, and another, and eventually one that doesn’t pop to reveal the same, deathly serenity of nothing at all, but a clump of white wall (or paint? Or flesh? Which was it, again?). A clump of white something that floats along without a sound, making ripples of its own until more and more clumps join it, all of them similar but none of them quite the same. Unfamiliar and alien but still recognizable to some faraway part of my mind that tries and tries to focus enough to decipher what I’m seeing, makes me reach out and touch, pushing the clump and watching it dip ever so slightly beneath the surface as a small cleft in the surface widens at the intrusion, the shape of human lips parting with a gentle breath.

Not clumps. Not clumps at all. Not mounds of wall or paint but mounds of flesh. And not just mounds of flesh but faces. A dozen human faces floating across the surface of this pond of people, all of them smooth and perfect and peaceful like sleeping marble statues. (Too peaceful. Not natural. The kind of peace that consumed a person forever.) Lips just barely above the water and blowing gentle ripples with silent breaths. Eyes closed and brows unconcerned. No traces of bodies beneath the surface (did the faces have bodies? Could I find out? Did I want to know?) And each entirely indistinct from the others, as if they could all be copies of a single person if not for the raspy, whispered insistence of we’re not that finally doesn’t come from everywhere and nowhere because it comes from the people-lake.

If not one, then who are you? How many are you?

The faces all float in perverse reverie, content in silence and stillness again, content to only ripple the waters at long intervals, like they hadn’t heard my questions. (Had I spoken though? Had it been in my head? Is this all in my head?) But something anything would be better than the quiet and the never-ending ticking that hadn’t ever gone away and just seems to get even louder and louder now that the faces aren’t talking and the arm-reeds had stilled and please please just do something.

You wanted me to see. You wanted me to hear. But see and hear what? How how how have you ended up here?

That draws the attention of the people in the walls and dozens of eyes blink into focus and all of a sudden there isn’t just white because now there’s red. Bright spots of red that aren’t hidden behind sleeping eyelids anymore as hundreds of voices start to talk and tumble over each other like they can’t hear each other but I still can.

Out out get out … Like us … trapped, trapped forever … promised you promised us promised everyone … no monsters here …

It’s loud it’s so loud and I try to cover my ears but it doesn’t do anything and the voices go on on on on. Screaming crying raging as they all try to be heard.

No escape no way out — one of us just like us just like — run run run far away from — help please please help — too late! Too late! — no harm no hurt nothing bad … worse worse than us so much worse … real monsters … outside …

The cacophony turns into unity and the voices converge on that final point, weeping instead of screaming as red tears (not tears not tears it’s blood) drip from the corners of red eyes into the pond, staining the white waters a deep crimson that seeps out past the barrier of arms and reeds, bleeding across the rest of the room until everything is drip dripping with so much blood.

A void of white, a sea of red, a blur of shape sound color feeling. And then darkness, silence, nothing.

*****

The kind man is the first thing I see. He gives me a smile that would have seemed warm only a day ago, before the walls had started moving, talking, and bleeding. Now? Now, the warmth looks false, the kindness rehearsed. (The monsters aren’t in here. They’re outside. They’re here, in front of me. Is that what it had all meant?) But the niceties don’t fade, even as I glance back at the now-still, now-silent walls. Even as he watches, expression unchanging, like he knows.

The questions follow, polite and patient, yet no more genuine for it. He asks how I’m feeling, if there are any lingering effects, any pain. (Yes, the effects do linger — will linger — but it’s not physical pain. It’s far worse.) When I say nothing hurts, he gives me another smile — one I realize too late has never reached his eyes.

Does he feel? Can he feel?

Is there even a point in wondering?

He places a hand on my shoulder to usher me out, the grip too tight to be comforting (intentional? A mistake? A slip in a facade?), and the cold man is waiting at the end of the hallway. He says nothing as the not-kind man wishes me a pleasant day, assures me that my life will be normal again, and disappears.

The walk to the exit is quiet, but far from normal, unless flinching at shadows and imagined faces in every wall, around every corner, is supposed to be normal. All the while, the cold man stays silent as his own mask cracks, apologies and anger in his eyes that never leave his lips. Nothing changes as we finally step into the sunlight of an ignorant world, filled with the chatter of voices that sound too much like different voices in my head. And then one last voice, muttered like he didn’t think I could hear it, like the cold man (no, not cold — something more conflicted) could hide the sound of frustration and dejection rolled into one: “Just one little pill.”

Just one little pill. Where this had all started. Just a pill. And an overnight stay. And a promise that everything would change. But change for the better?

Or for the worse?

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