What happened to life helplessly pouring out of delicately pierced organs, collecting beneath the bed in puddles? If you had gone to view the last drops dripping, you would see where air had kissed the porous openings and breathed sorrow into the room. It was all cleaned up now. The glistening eyes subdued, things had been kept safe. The lab coats could rinse their hands off and turn to each other and remark on a job well done. Which they did, smugly. They paraded their latest opus down the corridor, a seething glare replaced by a blank stare. A fine piece of work.
The rooms are watching him walk by. If they hope he’ll turn and say goodbye, they’re sorely mistaken. Because immediate relief at being released drowns out any nostalgia he might feel for the place– like when a man stands over the failing body of a nemesis in satisfaction. There will be enough time left for the fondness to haunt him later. As it is, the walls of the dark room still echo with the blinding revelation: “Primo Levi was the first to levitate.” He approaches its heavy set door without smelling the Zyklon B, without peering through its tiny window which gave him “Work Will Make You Free” hope not too long ago. The boy had survived Auschwitz, but they had taken his license to kill. It exasperated him, and it didn’t help when he realized this was the year of Bond. At last, he wondered if they would fix the rattling in the ceiling in time for the room’s next patient, and if the mouse would find the cheese before the principal electrocuted his friend.
By the time he steps past the dark room, the ringing walls have been whitewashed. Next thing that comes near is the line he waited in for hours to get the lethal injection only to be given mass-produced biscuits. Had to sit there trying to keep his head straight while trying not to look at the spy in the tie dye that had followed him there from his school. Had to keep it from lolling around to save his hair from the gravy. Had to fight the horrible heaviness– had to lift the weight while Atlas was gone. The boy knew he would pay back debts for the dreadful thing he had done; he just didn’t know what it was. The other kids talked normally. He couldn’t relate. With his feet already fulfilling half their mission, the boy looks straight ahead as the last whiff of cafeteria leaves him.
The blank stare ambles around the corner. His uprightness while walking pleases the lab coats, though he is lacking any semblance of probity. A man and woman who have been walking alongside him for some time now speak to him. He trades words without remembering what is said. The couple awakens his inert mind slightly as he struggles to recall why they seemed familiar, but all the while the blank stare remains aimed at the door as it advances. An unnerving mystery to him when he was at the other end of the hall, the doorknob twists slowly under his cautious hand. One of the lab coats makes an obligatory parting comment which he does not comprehend. The door opens out into a sunny parking lot which floods the boy’s senses more than parking lots usually do.
He is silent, with quiet thoughts, back at the scene of the crime. It is a lot more still now, the room. The carpet where the past was revealed to him, where the universe flashed before his mind’s eye like a near-death experience, where they found him eyes glazed-over drooling; it is still here. He wouldn’t be able to remember these things, though. If the boy lied down face sideways on the carpet now, he would feel only discomfort. He would not see in a solitary glittering speck of dust the embryo of an unborn world– or the course designed for it in the intricate patterns of the oriental rug. Destiny’s DNA would not untangle its double helix and mingle with his own this time, either. There would be no more magic carpet rides.
Those two trees loom, casting a shadow on his right in the yard where he played when he was younger, but they have less of a presence now. Tall and straight they stand at the end of the property down a stone path that he would follow to the play set when he was three feet tall and the bushes on either side made him feel like he was in a maze. He never noticed them when he was little, though, since they were behind the fence. When he looks out the window now, their deadness mocks him, and he tries to shield his inner self from their triviality, which is menacing.
While he rests on the bed in this room, the lady who had walked with him out of the hospital enters the room carrying a tray which holds a cold glass of milk and a plate of macaroni and cheese. It turns out she is his mother. She looks at the boy expectantly and smiles as she brings him the meal. Noticing her presence he remains silent. Mac and cheese is a favorite of his, but he isn’t hungry. Lingering around, she asks him how he is feeling. “Fine,” he says softly. She attempts to strike up more conversation, but he isn’t eager to talk. He hadn’t spoken much lately. If he said anything, it was with his face. Even so, it didn’t say much. To see this hurts his mother in a way similar to how her dull blades are more likely to cut her while she chops vegetables.
