Subject 11

8

The next morning, at the breakfast table, 2 found it much easier to avoid swallowing his daily ration of pills than he’d thought. When he brought his hand up to his mouth — atypically, as if to swallow all six of the pills in one go — he simply closed his fingers around the variety of gel capsules and tablets. As a bit of sleight of hand, magician’s misdirection, he raised his left hand with the tumbler of water at the same time he lowered his right hand with the palmed pills. Under the table, he tucked them into his waistband.

His performance was not noted, in any case. By now the ritual had become so second nature that the other three subjects didn’t even glance at him to verify his compliance. He just prayed that no one watching through a hidden camera had detected his trickery.

2 wasn’t even entirely sure why he had done it. He was a math teacher, his realm of expertise one of immutable order and hard rules. He would have expected one of the others, maybe young 6, to be more the rebel. Though who was to say 6 had actually taken his own pills just now?

Surely they couldn’t be seriously harmful, even if this was a trial for a new series of pharmaceuticals. Why then? Why had he felt he must purge his system of these unknown chemicals?

At the same time, there were other drugs which he still craved, though he had been denied them since the test had begun. He said aloud, “Man oh man, would I love some coffee right now. And more than that, a cigarette. I swear I could strangle a puppy for a cigarette.”

To his immediate left, 3 looked up at him and said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”

He blinked at her. “Of course. Of course I smoke. I, ah, I just haven’t been able to, so that’s why you haven’t seen me.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Me, too.”

“What? Really? Are you kidding now?”

“No. You just haven’t seen me because I haven’t been able to, either.”

“Oh. Wow. Well, you should quit that.”

“I will if you do.”

“Looks like we’re already working on that.”

3 looked him up and down, and smiled. “I thought people got fat when they quit smoking. I swear you’ve been getting thinner. When I first met you, you had more of a gut.”

“A gut? Thanks.”

“Well, you don’t now. You look sexier.”

2 chuckled, shy in front of the others but pleased. From the corner of his eye he saw 6 look across the table at them, his tumbler paused on its way to his mouth. 2 wanted to tell 3 she looked as sexy as ever, but decided to save the compliment for when they were alone.

Finished with her meal, 5 got up from the table, stretched with an exaggerated yawn, and wandered across the room to one of the towering windows. She called hollowly across the room to the others, “Wow, it’s really snowing out there now. You should see it — everything is white.”

While 3 finished her modest meal, 2 and 6 joined 5 at the window. “Huh, yeah,” said 2, observing the blizzard. “It looks like the whole world’s being erased.”

2 glanced back at the Formica-topped table around which their four chairs were grouped, to see if 3 was finished and ready to have a look outside for herself. He was surprised to see that she was gone from the room instead. The four chairs stood empty.

5 left the banquet hall, proclaiming that she would be taking a shower, leaving 2 and 6 alone. 2 didn’t want to make conversation with the younger man, so he busied himself with exploring the room’s furthest reaches: the far wall opposite that in which the great windows were set. Here, and spaced elsewhere in the enormous room, a cast iron radiator with leafy scroll designs stood against the wall of glazed white bricks. Nearing it, 2 established that it was functioning, giving off heat to keep the wintry weather outside at bay. Not far from the radiator, lying flush with the wall and apparently overlooked by whomever had stripped this complex to the bones, he spotted a few varied lengths of old copper pipe, blotched green with verdigris. He lifted one of these, about three feet long and with a ninety degree elbow at one end. Hefting it in two hands like a baseball bat, he regarded how good it might serve as a weapon.

A weapon? And why was he thinking about that?

Still, he carried it back to the table with him and rested it across the imitation granite surface. He saw that 6 had busied himself with an ersatz game of basketball, repeatedly launching a balled-up paper lunch bag, probably his own, toward the white plastic bucket in which their three daily meals dropped.

Both men looked around as 5 reentered the room, walking briskly and with a fretful expression. When she arrived at the table, 6 drew in closer to hear what she had to report.

Out of breath, 5 whispered, “Just now I accidentally walked in on 3 when she getting ready to take a shower. She hadn’t turned the hose on yet, so I didn’t hear her in there. I don’t think she saw me in the doorway — I was only there for a second.”

“And?” 6 asked.

“Anyway, she was naked, and I couldn’t believe it but… she has a penis. 3 is really a guy!”

2 hissed, “What?”

“I think she hid it from Dr. Onsay. Don’t you see how this might throw the test off? There’s supposed to be two guys and two girls, right? I’m sure that arrangement was intentional. But now it’s really three guys and just one girl — me!”

6 said, “She’s not a guy. Impossible.”

“I know what I saw!” 5 insisted.

“You said you only saw her a second.”

“Look, I’m telling you she has a cock — I saw it plain as day!”

“And I’m telling you she doesn’t have a cock,” 6 retorted.

“How would you know?”

“Because I’ve seen her plain as day, too.”

2 turned toward 6. “What do you mean, you’ve seen her plain as day? When did this happen?”

6 looked sorry at what he had blurted. “Yeah, I know… you’ve seen her, too, haven’t you?”

“I asked you when and how did you see her?” 2 growled through gritted teeth.

“Look, before you get all violent, here, it’s her you should be taking this up with if it bothers you, not me.”

“But who knows,” 5 said as if weighing the matter alone, oblivious to the tension between the two men, “maybe Dr. Onsay is aware of it — maybe 3’s discussed it in confession — and it doesn’t matter if I’m the only woman, after all.”

“Fuck this,” 2 snarled. “I’m going to go talk to her right now.”

“You’re going to walk in the shower and ask her to show you her cock?” 5 said, snapping out of her pensive state.

“She does not have a fucking cock!” 2 shouted. “But apparently she’s had this motherfucker’s cock.”

“Fuck you, man,” 6 snapped. “What are you, her husband or something?”

2 began stomping across the room. “Suck my dick,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Ah, go suck her dick!” 6 returned.

5 faced 6 with a furrowed brow and said, “I thought you said she didn’t have a dick.”

Exasperated, 6 told her, “I’m just giving the guy shit, now!”

When 2 stepped into the women’s shower room, its new mural of graffiti shiny with sprayed water as if its paint was not yet dry, 3 looked up at him with a gasp, pressing a hand flat between her adolescent breasts with their pronounced dark brown nipples. Her hair was plastered to her neck, water beaded on her tiny body with its barely defined hips. Nestled under a wiry black thatch of hair, her penis was shaded a darker brown than the rest of her skin, small and uncircumcised.

“Oh thank God,” 3 said, “it’s only you.”

2 stared at her in horrified awe, wagging his head. “I can’t believe this… I can’t believe it. It’s true!”

“What’s true, honey?”

He coughed up a laugh. “Oh, so now I’m honey, huh?” He pointed. “You have a cock… you actually do have a cock! You’re a guy!”

3’s brows lowered, her expression darkening. “What are you saying? You act like you didn’t know. You didn’t kind of notice this before, when we made love up in that storeroom?”

“But… but I fucked you…”

“Ah, yes. In the ass. Are you saying you don’t know the difference? Come on now, are you going crazy or are you just sorry about it now? At the time you didn’t seem to mind. Are the drugs getting to you that much that you really forgot?”

Pressing his palms to his temples, 2 stammered, “I… I’m sorry…”

“Sorry what? Sorry you and me made love?”

“I’m sorry I forgot about… this.”

“How could you forget?”

“I don’t know. But yeah, I guess now it’s coming back to me. I’m sorry — I’m so sorry. It must be the drugs, like you say.”

3 wrapped a white terrycloth towel around her glistening body, hiding her manhood from him, still looking doubtful. “So what are you thinking now, about me?”

“Well, I’m just thinking… didn’t you say you have one child? A daughter?”

“Not a daughter; a son,” 3 replied. “I mean, a stepson. I called him my ‘sun.’ He’s four years old. But he doesn’t live with me anymore. He lives in California.”

“Oh… yeah… right. I think I remember that now. Your ex’s son, huh?” Then 2’s befuddlement turned to a flushed red anger. “6 told me he’s seen you with no clothes, too. So you fucked him, didn’t you? Or should I say he fucked you? Or for all I know you fucked each other!”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she said sharply. But then, modifying her tone, she said, “Honey, look, I’m sorry… okay, I had sex with him one time. It was before you and I made love. After that I’ve barely talked to him again. You told me after this was all over you wanted to be with me. Maybe I didn’t give you a straight answer before… maybe I had some doubts, if you really could love me or if I’m only a novelty and you’ll get tired of that. But if you’re really serious about me, then I want to be with you, too. So you have to forgive me about 6, okay? I didn’t… I wasn’t sure… maybe I was being greedy. Just try to forgive me and get past it, all right? Please?”

2 moved toward her, and 3 opened her arms to accept his embrace. He crushed her against his much larger body, and nuzzled his nose in her wet scalp. “Forgive me,” he said softly, “and I’ll forgive you, too. But you’re mine now; don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” she said huskily, her face against his chest. And below, her penis was becoming erect as it pressed against his body, as well.

Had to be the pills, 2 thought. He was so glad he hadn’t taken them this morning. He swore to himself that for however much longer this test endured, he would not take a single one of them again.