Holly

July 2, 2021

Bonnie wakes up thirsty and with a mild headache, but nothing like the hangover symptoms Jorge Castro and Cary Dressler felt on waking. Roddy used an injectable ketamine solution on them, but switched to Valium for Ellen and Pete. It’s not because of the vicious mornings-after they suffered, he couldn’t care less about those, but postmortem samples showed incipient damage to Castro’s and Dressler’s cellular structure in the thorax and lymph nodes. It hadn’t reached their livers, thank God, the liver being the center of regeneration, but those damaged lymph nodes were still worrying. Cellular damage there can conceivably pollute the fat, which he uses for his arthritic hands and Emily uses on her left buttock and leg to soothe the sciatic nerve.

There are many uses for the brains of their livestock, and such organs as the heart and kidneys, but the liver is what matters most, because it is the consumption of the human liver that preserves vitality and lengthens life. Once the liver has been fully awakened, that is, and calf’s liver triggers that awakening. Human liver would undoubtedly be even more efficacious, but that would mean taking two people each time, one to donate a liver and the other to feed on it before being slaughtered, and the Harrises have decided that would be much too dangerous. Calf’s liver serves very well, being close to the human liver at a cellular level. Pigs’ liver is even closer, the DNA nearly indistinguishable, but with pigs there’s the danger of prions. The risk is negligible, but neither Rodney or Emily wants to die with prions eating holes in their valuable brains.

Bonnie knows none of this. What she knows is that she’s thirsty and her head hurts. Another thing she knows: she’s a prisoner. The cell she’s in appears to be at one end of someone’s basement. It’s hard for her to believe it’s below the tidy Victorian home of the Professors Harris, but harder not to believe it. The basement is big, lit by fluorescents that have been turned down to a soothing yellow glow. The space in front of the cage is bare, clean cement. Beyond is a flight of stairs, and beyond that is a workshop containing machines she doesn’t know the names of, although it seems fairly obvious that they’re power tools for cutting and sanding, things like that. The biggest item, on the far side of the room, is a metal box equipped with a hose that goes into the wall next to a small door. She assumes it’s an HVAC unit for heating and air conditioning.

Bonnie sits up and massages her temples, trying to ease the headache. Something falls to the futon she woke up on. It’s one of her earrings. The other appears to be gone, probably knocked off or pulled off in the struggle. And there was a struggle. It’s hazy, but she remembers lurching along the front of a deserted building, trying to hold onto consciousness long enough to get away, but Rodney grabbed her and pulled her back.

She looks at the little golden triangle—not real gold, of course, but a pretty thing—and tucks it under the futon. Partly because one earring is no good unless you’re a pirate or a gay guy trying to look suave in a singles bar, but also because the three corners are sharp. It might come in handy.

There’s a Porta-John in the corner of the cell, and like Jorge Castro, Cary Dressler, and Ellen Craslow before her (Stinky Steinman perhaps not so much), she knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile. It’s still hard for her to believe the someone is Professor Rodney Harris, retired biologist and nutritionist. It’s easier to believe that Emily is his accomplice… or, more likely, he is hers. Because Emily’s the Alpha dog in their relationship, and although Em extended herself to make a colleague of Bonnie, if not actually a friend, Bonnie never completely trusted her. Even in her brief time of employment, she tried to do everything right, because she had an idea Emily wasn’t a woman you wanted to get crosswise with.

Bonnie examines the bars, home-welded but rock solid. There’s a keypad—she can see it by leaning the side of her face against the bars—but there’s a plastic cover over it and she can’t get it off or even loosen it. Even if she could, happening on the right combination would be like getting all the Powerball numbers.

As did the previous inhabitants of this cell, she sees the camera lens peering down at her, but unlike her predecessors, she doesn’t yell at it. She’s a smart woman and knows that at some point someone will come. Most likely one of the Harrises. And are they going to apologize, say it’s all been a terrible mistake? Unlikely.

Bonnie is very frightened.

There’s an orange crate against the far wall with two bottles of Artesia water on it. Jorge Castro and Cary Dressler got Dasani, but Emily insisted on switching to Artesia, because Dasani is owned by Coca-Cola, and they are (according to her) sucking the upstate water table dry. Artesia is locally owned, which makes them more politically correct.

Bonnie opens one of the bottles, drinks half, and recaps it. Then she lifts the lid of the Porta-John and drops her pants. She can’t do anything about the camera, so she lowers her head and covers her face as when as a small child she did something naughty, reasoning that if she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her. She finishes, drinks some more water, and sits on the futon.

With her thirst slaked, she actually feels—strange under the circumstances, but true—rested. She wouldn’t go so far as to say refreshed, but rested. She tries to reason why they took her and can’t get far. Sex would seem the most obvious motive, but they’re old. Too old? Maybe not, and if it’s sexual at their age, it’s got to be something weird. Something that won’t end well.

Could it be some kind of experimentation? One requiring human guinea pigs? She’s heard around campus that Rodney Harris had a few screws loose—his screamy lectures about meat as the central pillar of nutrition are legendary—but can he be actually insane, like a mad scientist in a horror movie? If so, his laboratory must be somewhere else. What she’s looking at is the kind of workshop where a retired oldster might putter around making bookcases or birdhouses. Or cell bars.

Bonnie turns her mind to who might figure out she’s missing. Her mother is the most likely, but Penny won’t realize something is wrong immediately; they’re going through one of their cold snaps. Tom Higgins? Forget about it, they’ve been quits for months, and besides, she’s heard he’s gone. Keisha might, but with the library barely running in low gear thanks to summer break and Covid, Keish might simply assume Bonnie is taking some time off. God knows she has plenty of sick days. Or suppose Keisha thinks Bonnie just decided to drop everything and leave town? Bonnie has talked about wanting to go west, young woman, go west, maybe to San Francisco or Carmel-by-the-Sea, but that’s just so much blue-sky talk, and Keisha knows it.

Doesn’t she?

A door opens at the top of the basement stairs. Bonnie goes to the bars of the cell. Rodney Harris comes down. Slowly, as if he might break. Emily usually brings the tray the first time, but today her sciatica is so bad that she’s lying in bed with her Therma-Brace cinched around her back. Much good that will do; it’s quack medicine at best. Pain pills, with their relentless destruction of the brain’s synapses, are even worse.

Roddy thawed and stewed most of what remains of Peter Steinman and was able to make her a kind of heart-and-lung porridge sprinkled with bonemeal. It may help some, but not a lot. Human flesh that’s been frozen and thawed seems to have little efficacy, and what Em really needs is fresh liver. But the Steinman boy’s was harvested long since. Supplies always run out, and the benefits they get from their livestock simply don’t last as long as they used to. He hasn’t said as much to Emily, but he’s sure she knows. She’s not a scientist, but she’s not dumb.

He stops a safe distance from the cell, drops to one knee, and sets the tray on the floor. When he straightens (with a wince; everything hurts this morning), Bonnie sees a purple bruise on his right cheekbone. It has spread up to his eye and almost down to his jaw. She has always been an even-tempered girl, largely exempt from the strongest emotions. She would have said only her mother could really get her goat, but the sight of that bruise makes her simultaneously furious and savagely happy.

I got you, didn’t I? she thinks. I got you good.

“Why?” she asks.

Roddy says nothing. Emily has told him that is by far the best course, and she’s right. You don’t talk to a steer in a pen, and you certainly don’t engage in a conversation with one. Why would you? The steer is merely food.

“What did I ever do to you, Professor Harris?”

Nothing at all, he thinks as he goes to get the broom leaning against the stairs.

Bonnie looks at the tray. There’s a plastic go-cup lying on its side with a brown envelope tucked into its mouth, maybe some kind of insta-breakfast. The other thing on the tray is a slab of raw meat.

“Is that liver?”

No answer.

The broom is the wide kind that janitors use. He pushes the tray through a hinged flap in the bottom of the cell.

“I like liver,” Bonnie says, “but with fried onions. And I prefer it cooked.”

He makes no reply, just goes back to the stairs and leans the broom against it. He starts back up.

“Professor?”

He turns to look at her, eyebrows raised.

“That’s quite a bruise you’ve got there.”

He touches it and winces again. This also makes Bonnie happy.

“You know what? I wish I’d knocked your fucking crazy head right off your fucking neck.”

The unbruised side of his face reddens. He seems about to reply but restrains himself. He goes up the stairs and she hears the door close. No, not close; it slams. This also makes her happy.

She pulls the envelope from the go-cup. It’s Ka’Chava. She’s heard of it but never had any. She guesses she’ll have some now. In spite of everything, she’s hungry. Crazy but true. She tears off the top of the envelope, dumps it in the cup, and adds water from her other bottle. She stirs it with her finger, thinking the elderly dingbat could at least have provided a spoon. She tries it and finds it quite good.

Bonnie drinks half, then sets the go-cup on the closed lid of the Porta-John. She goes to the bars. Crazy or not, the old prof is a compulsive neatnik. The cement floor doesn’t have a single spot of dirt on it. The wrenches are hung on pegs in descending order. So are the screwdrivers. Ditto the three saws—big, medium, and a small one Bonnie believes is called a keyhole saw. Pliers… chisels… rolls of tape… and…

Bonnie puts her hand over her mouth. She had been scared; now she’s terrified. What she’s looking at brings the reality of her situation home to her: she has been imprisoned like a rat in a cage and barring a miracle, she’s not getting out alive.

Hanging like trophies on the pegboard next to the rolls of tape are her bike helmet and backpack.