From Heaven's Door

Chapter 7

VI

The four hours passed like a finger snap. Me and Jilton conversed – I kept up my end as best I could with a notebook – and learned that their case was much the same as mine. They'd woken up roughly four weeks back with not a clue of where or who they were. They did something they refused to tell me about, though my curiosity nagged at me to find out further, but they'd managed to weasel their way into a position of favor with the Director, as they called them. The higher-ups had taken care of the rest and they'd been given a room to wait in between daily "performances." They still hadn't said much on that subject that wasn't cloaked with a metric fuckton of show-based metaphors. That was about the only thing that irritated me with Jilton. Aside from that, they were talkative, chipper, funny as all hell, and supportive of my position. I liked them. I trusted them. I couldn't wait to see the show.

The signal that four hours had passed came from a buzz on the wristwatch. Jilton stopped mid-conversation and gazed down at it, apparently taken aback. The watch read 18:00.

"Well, well," they exclaimed. "Time flies. Let's let the show begin!"

I beamed. I couldn't believe four entire hours had passed in the time it took us to talk. We'd passed from one subject to another and the conversation filled up the glass of time comfortably and quickly.

Jilton paced over to the elevator, hit the button, and let the doors part open to reveal a clean-looking inner elevator with a sleek interior. They civilly stepped aside and beckoned me in, their voice taking on an impression of that of some stereotypical upper-class British gentleman.

"You first, my compatriot," they said with a smirk.

I guess I was expecting "ladies first." Maybe they just didn't care for formalities like that. Maybe they didn't know or care. I certainly didn't. I went into the elevator and Jilton quickly followed me in, pressing a button marked "19" and allowing the elevator to run its course. The built-in radio buzzed and a song started to play.

Ooh ooh ooh, ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh...

Not this.

Ooh ooh ooh, ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh...

Not... this?

I let the song play its course as the elevator moved upwards. I tapped my foot. Bobbed my head. Some part of me was telling me to hate this song, but...

That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh...

...I couldn't.

Jilton looked down at me, amused. "You like that song, eh?" they said. "That's KC & the Sunshine Band. Funky beat, that. Nestles in your brain like a parasite. Classic example of an ear worm."

Something was familiar about the song. I remembered listening to it. I remembered a circumstance just like this. Slowly, my mind focused back on the butchered memory of those two faceless figures. Bandage-person. Albino. Who were they? Did I know them? Had I seen them before? Something was so familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was just out of reach...

The elevator came to a stop with a jolt, putting me out of my trance. The door opened, and my blood suddenly ran cold as I looked forth to the new room.

There they were. Suits. Twitching with their gangly limbs, moving their heads to and fro like pigeons, mumbling and clacking their tweezers and squeezing their ducks. They lined the sides of a hallway extending to a new, coal-black door engraved with the image of a red clover. Not the flower – an actual, blood-red four-leaf clover.

Red Clover. The moment I looked at that symbol, a new memory came up. A person in a dingy suit with the symbol of the red four-leaf clover on a pendant around their neck. Behind them I could recall some other shadowed figure, probably a woman. They were faceless. The woman was pointing at me. That other figure slowly got closer, and...

I couldn't picture anything past that. The memory made me wince by instinct. I couldn't remember the face of that one person, but I could lucidly remember the feeling they gave out. Hostile. Cruel. Vicious, foreboding intentions. The kind of person who'd mug you in an alley and beat you senseless for a giggle.

I suddenly felt very uneasy, the feeling tripled when the Suits all collectively turned their masked heads towards us. They didn't seem to be doing anything except waiting. For us? The closest one pointed a pair of tweezers at us in a shaking hand and seemed to signal us to come forth. Jilton started to step out of the elevator, but I nervously tugged on their sweater and shook my head with a frown on my face.

Jilton looked concerned and reflected my frown. "What's wrong, Harpo? Show's about to start."

I quickly put my notebook in their hand and wrote something with my working hand.

i don't really want to go any further

Jilton c****d their head in confusion. "What's the matter? Five seconds ago you were all propped up to see this biz and now you want out? Why?"

I began to write something down.

i just

There was a screeching noise from one of the Suits that made me literally jump back and collapse back into the elevator. Jilton backed up a bit themselves and tried to calm the Suit.

"Easy, easy, we're coming, we're coming," they said, nervous. They picked me up, dusted me off, and handed my notebook, trying to reassure me. "Listen, Harpo, these guys aren't patient like I am. We really need to go if we want what's best for us."

That didn't reassure me. At all. I started silently hyperventilating, my heart throbbing in my chest as Jilton took me by the hand and led me down the hall. I wanted to fight back, but I didn't want to agitate the Suits and I certainly didn't want to displease Jilton. The Suits glared at me with those hideous, exaggerated eyes, the clacking of the tweezers the only thing I could hear. I closed my eyes and tried not to look at them, but only five seconds passed before I fell to temptation and opened them again. The clover door was right up ahead of us, and an overwhelming sense of dread ate my heart as we stopped at it.

Jilton took a sort of silver card out of their pocket and slid it down. They leaned over to the card scanner and spoke into a little microphone on it.

"#48. With anon-guest," they said.

#48? They hadn't brought that up. The hell were they talking about?

The black door opened three seconds after Jilton spoke. We stepped in, and the door closed behind us, leaving the line of Suits behind us.

The room wasn't a stage. It wasn't anything like Jilton had described it with their weird-ass metaphors. It was more like a sort of dome, the walls slick and black and the air cold and flavorless. Screens surrounded the entire room, casting an artificial blue light on everything. Five people stood at the end of the room, clad head-to-toe in black, completely featureless outfits. They seemed no more human than the Suits, but something about them suggested something more dignified – and more powerful – than they could ever be. They stared at us without eyes and judged us without mouths. I looked around in terror at the screens.

Only one seemed active, one marked "#48." The display, small as it was, showed a hall not unlike the ones still in my rotted over memory. On the display and through the hallway, two people I'd never seen before seemed to run for their lives. Their features were virtually unidentifiable through the haze of the screen, but whenever they ran off camera, the screen briefly buzzed out and changed to a view of a new angle, always following the two runaways and always keeping them on camera no matter where they ran. They seemed panicked.

I was panicked. I didn't know what was going on. This wasn't what I was expecting. This wasn't supposed to happen.

The five, black-suited figures stepped aside, and behind them, another double-door, built into the wall and completely indistinguishable from it until it opened, parted and another person – identifiable as a man in a sharp contrast from all the other runaways I'd seen – stepped from a room of light and shapes before the door closed behind them. He was taller than everyone, at least six-foot four. He had grimy, tousled, neck-length silver hair, and a face suggesting more a shark than a person. He had beady-looking, almost slanted eyes, a pointy-looking nose, and a scowling mouth of jagged-looking teeth. He was clad in a dingy gray coat with holes all over it and baggy, stained, beaten-up trousers that he'd probably taken out of a f*****g dumpster. Hanging by his neck was a pendant of the same symbol of the four-leaved red clover.

Some part of me suggested I subconsciously knew this person from the past. Almost certainly from that memory I'd just had. Another, louder part of me told me I didn't want to know him any closer.

The person stepped up to Jilton, who seemed to shrink back a bit. He spoke.

"Oi, #48. You're lookin' perky, eh?" He nudged Jilton with a sick-sounding laugh. Jilton returned an awkward chuckle. The person's voice reeked of knives and malice. It was like the embodiment of hatred trying its utmost best to sound normal and polite and talking through a voice that was deceptively affable and yet thinly masking nothing but pure, undiluted contempt. Every part of this person, from the way he dressed, talked, and walked, stunk of hatred.

Jilton rubbed the back of their head. "You're looking... well, Ash. The Director been paying you fine?"

Ash cackled. "Better than the rest of these scrubs. Fucker ought to give me full fuckin' credit for helpin' run this bag of ass! Chayne's been too busy muckin' around with her own s**t, and..." He suddenly cut himself off, then glowered at me with a look that made me literally hide behind Jilton. "Who's that sorry-lookin' sop?"

Jilton reared over me a little protectively, although they maintained a civic voice. "That's Harpo, Ash. They came to me down in my room looking all beat-up, so I promised them a first-row seat to our little show!"

Ash pulled his lip up, then stared daggers at me again for a solid three seconds. Then he grinned.

His smile was even worse than his glare.

"Aye. Aye, I think I kinda remember you now, kid." He tapped his noggin to indicate something. "Memories fly in and out, y'know? I think I can remember you now, though. You're here to see the show, huh? That's fuckin' A. I don't mind that." He looked behind him. "Any of you lot mind this lil' cherry watchin'?"

The black-suited people stiffly shook their heads.

Ash looked back down at me and reared uncomfortably close, his smile widening. "So how in all fuckin' blazes did you get in this position, huh? You been pullin' favors? Or did you just see a little too much like this sap here?"

Jilton stepped between me and Ash, causing him to growl and back away. I felt hideously uncomfortable near this fuckoff. He were like a bag of s**t zipped up in a human cloak.

"They can't talk," Jilton said. "That's why I called them Harpo. You get it? Like the... Marx..." They slowly coughed and stopped when Ash gave them a look capable of killing someone through the hatred it projected alone. "They woke up a bit back. They can't remember anything, just like me. They've taken to the role of the amnesiac and I've promised to let them see what they want."

Ash quietly nodded, then looked back at me. "You survived, then? My fuckin' applause, man! We got ourselves a fuckin' survivor here!"

Survivor? What the f**k was he talking about?

Then, Ash barged between me and Jilton, roughly shoved Jilton aside, and seized me harshly by my shirt. He pulled me close and sniffed my f*****g hair. As I wordlessly trembled, he forcefully seized my chin and turned my face to look at him. Ash's face filled up my entire field of vision for the worst second of my life.

"Aye, you're just as fuckin' nice as I remember... we got us a real fuckin' nice one, blokes. We'll keep this one alive for sure. Shower up and you'll be real fuckin' fine..." he muttered with a depraved edge to his voice.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to vomit. This wasn't what I had in mind. This wasn't what I wanted.

Jilton forced Ash back and let go of me, forcing themselves to smile and chuckle awkwardly. "Yes, I'm... sure they might." Jilton turned back to me as Ash crossed his arms. Jilton did their best to smile. "You ready to see the performance, Harpo? This'll be a four-star thing!" they said, eagerly.

I just stared at them with blank, empty eyes and a gaping, disbelieving mouth.

Jilton seemed to take my uncomfortable expression as a "yes" for whatever f*****g reason. Actually, thinking about it, Ash was probably the reason. Everything in the room seemed to bend to his horrible presence. Jilton walked over to the screen, and leaned over to a sort of control panel with a glowing, ocean-blue outline and pretty-looking neon green buttons, marked with letters in a pattern I couldn't decipher. Jilton cleared their throat.

"A-hem... Let the show begin!" they cried with a theatrical flourish that seemed to make Ash cringe. My gaze locked on the #48 screen as Jilton tapped one of the buttons.

On the screen, Suits materialized in the hallway the people were in. They had taken a moment to rest, clearly exasperated, but as the Suits materialized, their eyes widened and their expression turned to fear.

So did mine. I watched in horror as the Suits converged on the first person and tore them to shreds. The second one tried to pull them away, but the Suits quickly jabbed something gleaming silver through their eye and they collapsed with a scream not heard through the display. The Suits quickly went upon them as well. Everyone was watching and as soon as the two stopped moving, the display slowly went red and a check-mark appeared on the upper-left corner of the screen. Raucous applause started through the display room from Ash and the black-suited men, and Ash was cackling some hoarse, guttural laugh that sounded like he was having the time of his goddamned life. Jilton turned back to me.

They were smiling. They'd watched them die with a smile on their face.

"That was swell! Oh, that was flawless! What d'you say, Harpo? Was that a stellar performance or what?" they said, apparently expecting me to be as thrilled as they were.

Now I knew what they meant by "show." This was what they had been hiding the whole time. My heart sunk and new fear grew in me as Ash walked over, leaning down with that same s**t-eating grin on his murderous face.

"That was really somethin', huh, kiddo?" he said with sadism lacing his voice. "I'm surprised you of all people got past the fuckin' first few weeks! Oh, but that's a real fuckin' miracle. Chayne'll be happy to know you're up and runnin' alright."

I didn't know what he were talking about. I didn't want to. All my the voices in my head were screaming at me to run.

On instinct, I spat in Ash's face. He fell back and roared out in surprise. "What the f**k!?..."

I didn't turn to see Jilton's reaction. I didn't look to see if anybody else in the room would react. I rammed through the door, got up, and dashed as fast as my feet would carry me. The Suits lining the hallway were already acting up, twitching like epileptic madmen. I slid past the grasp of the first, punched open the elevator door, and threw myself in. I immediately started tapping the button for the doors to shut and the first Suit crept in before the elevator door closed, trapping out the rest and leaving one in with me. I looked at the Suit in horror, as the rest started to bash at the metal door in hellish cacophony. The Suit seemed to size me up for a bit; it stood a head at least taller than me and I was racing for breath. The Suit's hand went to its pocket, and it dropped the tweezers, plucking out something from the pocket.

I knew what the Suits had used to kill the other person now. It was a giant pair of what looked like scissors, with a flickering, pointed blade that could pierce flesh like paper. The rest of the Suits still banging furiously on the door, the Suit chattered something I couldn't hear, then suddenly lunged at me, stabbing the scissors forward. My body suddenly commanded myself to throw me to the side and the scissors glanced off my useless right arm as I hit the left side of the elevator. As soon as the door started to dent and Ash's raging scream became apparent through the pounding of the Suits, I acted on the first thing I thought of. I pushed myself back against the wall and kicked my foot out while the Suit's hand was still in front of me. My foot pushed into their hand and crushed it into the row of buttons on the elevator, all at once causing them to drop the scissors and hit a random number.

Floor #5, exactly fourteen floors down. That was good enough for me. As the elevator started down and the Sunshine Band song started again, I leaned down and picked up the scissors the Suit had dropped. The Suits was already reaching into its pocket to grab out something else, but I was having none of it. I gave a hoarse, quiet cry, and lunged forth, implanting the scissors right through the Suit's chest. The scissors stopped against the wall and the Suit stood transfixed, its head twitching like mad. I withdrew the scissors, and out of blind, survival-driven rage, I stabbed the scissors in and out as many times as I could, impaling it again and again until it finally just dropped against the side of the elevator, stopped twitching, and left me stabbing the scissors against the elevator wall, scratching and denting it.

My heart-rate didn't slow down as I looked at the dead Suit. I took a deep breath in, dropped the scissors with a loud clang, huddled up, and started crying. Hot tears poured down my face and my chest seized up with sobs. I couldn't take this. Jilton lied to me. I'd just seen two people die at their command and I'd been obliviously led into it with food and water and charm. They wanted me to join them in doing this to get to the top. Jilton wanted me to be like that. I barely knew what to think. A barrage of thoughts assaulted me and just piled up. I felt betrayed, angry, sad, and just out-and-out horrible. Why the f**k did this have to happen? If that's what getting to the top meant, I would have sincerely just put the scissors in my neck.

I quietly wept as the song continued to taunt me as it did.

That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh...

No, it wasn't.

The elevator doors opened and the dead Suit's head fell to the opened space. I quietly looked at their corpse. It didn't bleed. Its suit was in tatters and the only thing I could see within was linen and blackness. I quietly considered taking off the mask, then decided f**k that. If it was something traumatizing, I didn't want or need to see it.

The electric buzz of the fluorescent lights started up again. I wiped away my tears, still choked up, took the scissors, and stepped into the room. It was the same white hallway I'd remembered. It extended forth, a few doors at the side, and split into three paths left, right, and forwards, the path straight ahead ending at another door.

I cautiously walked forwards. The elevator doors closed behind me automatically, crushing the Suit's head and mask with a wet, crunchy noise that made me wince. Maybe there was human flesh in there. I sincerely doubted it, though. I thought to myself again.

Red Clover.

What was that? A goddamned organization? The people responsible for running this place? The name came to me as if I'd always remembered it and the symbol stuck in my head. I hated it. Some part of me told me that – and the Director, whoever the hell they were – were responsible for my misery here. Aside from that, my thoughts simply dwelt on Jilton and how much of an i***t I had been to trust them.

They had seemed so nice. So well-meaning. Did they truly believe it was all just some show? That it was all just simulated entertainment? Maybe they were deceiving them. Maybe they'd brainwashed them or something.

Regardless, the truth was plain to me and it should've been plain to them. I'd just witness them sic the Suits on two completely innocent people and kill them. Kill. Death.

Murder.

They was a murderer. Everyone in that room was. It was such an ugly word with ugly connotations. Ending of the life of someone, extinguishing their entire being with a push of a button and then smiling about it – or in Ash's case, laughing about it. What sick monster could do that with a straight face? I looked back at the elevator, where the Suit had been. Was I a murderer for killing the Suit? It was trying to kill me; I defended my own life by taking its. What could be defined as murder here? What even were the Suits?

I sniffed to myself and started to walk off, my breath still short and my heart still beating like mad. The scissors, much heavier now that the adrenaline had cleared from my system, dragged across the floor with a ear-cutting metallic screech, and I dropped them and put my hand up, backing away from it. No way I was letting that give away my position.

"Over there! I heard something!"

A voice came out from the left end hallway and my blood utterly chilled. They'd already heard. I had been screwed the moment I stepped out of the elevator. A pair of footsteps tromped down the hallway, getting louder and louder, and I leaned down to pick up the scissors again, still fighting back tears of pain and frustration.

Murder or not, if I had to kill to get out of this place, I decided that I most certainly would. The footsteps got louder, reached the end of the hallway, and the sources stepped from behind the corner.

It was them. The albino and the bandage-person, in the flesh.