Have you forgotten so easily? We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread.
-test subject, Russian Sleep Experiment, 1947
“That’s one score settled,” Jordana beams as Montague enters the locker room. She reclines in an oversized chair, expertly wearing the Yor Forger costume so that nothing is revealed.
The Showman smiles, removing his ornate jacket and hanging it carefully before grabbing a towel and wiping post-match sweat.
“Are you going to tell me what that was about? With D, at the end?” she presses.
“No I’m not,” he teases, giving her a mischievous smirk. When she pouts, he adds, “not here anyway. The walls have eyes and ears. Let’s just say the settling of scores has only just begun.”
Shifting gears, Jordana asks, “Have you called Morgan yet?”
“Yes, and all he’ll tell me is that she’s unavailable,” Monty shrugs. “She’ll contact me when she’s ready.”
Jordana nods, trusting the Doctor-Professor’s faith in Jacky. That being said, the odd, downward cast of his eyes had her curious.
“Well then, for the life of me,” she admits, “I can’t imagine why you look like Rogan MacLean realizing he’s going to have to dial back his creativity again to keep bottoming for Lucy Wylde.”
That earns a full blown grin from her client.
“Your savagery never fails to cheer me up,” Montague sighs pleasurably, “Actually, The Dark Man may have a very important role to play in things to come.”
“Wonders will never cease…” quips Jordana.
“Not while we’re around, my dear,” he quickly agrees.
The floor of the chamber runs four inches deep with blood and urine. The smell is unbearable. The prisoners are covered in torn flesh; self-inflicted considering one of them was still chewing what was left of his index finger. There were only four now, as one had been nearly devoured down to his skeleton. The rations which had been sealed in with them weren’t touched.
When it became obvious that the experiment was at an end fifteen days early, and there would be no more gas, they fought. Freedom had been a motivator for their compliance, their status of enemies of the state would be expunged. When liberty without the experimental stimulant gas was presented, the remaining prisoners rejected it.
They no longer wanted sleep.
Seemingly lost in the warrens in the bowels of the Underlook, Montague wanders down narrow, stone corridors. As he navigates down the gently-sloping, winding hallway, he runs the fingertips of his left hand along the carved wall, tracing the branching white patterns of mycelium and quartz veins as he passes.
“It’s unlike me to interrupt an opus such as the one Rogan is currently conducting,” he laments. “And what a performance it has been so far.”
The walls narrow the further he proceeds. Eventually, the evidence of human influence stops abruptly, as if the explorers excavating this particular shaft had unexpectedly broken through to a naturally occurring, perpendicular passage. Stepping through, Monty turns left without pausing to consider the other option.
“You’ve turned in historic performances against…” he stops short suddenly, as if trying to shake the names from some cobwebbed corner of his memory. “Vespertine and Konrad?”
A few blinks give away that he’s not sure if he has that right, but he raises one shoulder, dismissing the doubt before continuing his trek.
“Your act featuring Holden Orson leaves something to be desired,” the critique continues, “and I think we both know you’d be better served canceling that production, lest your audience suffer vicarious humiliation.”
Presently, Montague comes upon something that couldn’t appear more out of place; the type of sliding glass door you’d pass through when entering a supermarket. Responding to his approach, the doors whisper apart, allowing him to pass into a large cavern.
“You may not think you have better prospects,” reasons Monty, “and given the abysmal auditions you’ve been giving, I can’t say I’d blame you. But lucky for you, I’m friends with the producer.”
With an indulgent smile, the Showman gazes up. Dotted around the cavity wall are countless, similar, sliding glass doors.
“I’m told you have some experiences with nexuses. This should look familiar then.”
He holds his arms out, palms up for effect, impressed in spite of himself.
With a more serious tone, Montague continues, “You’ve quested for the nexus many times, I gather. You’re being called again, Rogan, only this time you’re not the star in your own head canon. This time you’re a means to an end; necessary, but only insomuch as the corridor I just traversed was necessary for me to reach this center. I could have chosen any path to get her… I mean here. I’m choosing you.”
He crosses his arms and raises one eyebrow.
“Will you play your role?”
Eventually, their pleading requests to be returned to the chamber were ordered to be granted, but not before the medical staff did their best to patch them up. One died on the table before he could be saved.
Another prisoner ripped out the throat of the soldier trying to restrain him. The next strained so hard against his restraints that he broke three ribs and dislocated a shoulder. It was the anesthetic they were resisting, only calming when it was taken away. By contrast, when the surgeons were forced to operate without the painkiller, the patients remained calm and serene.
As the surgeon was finishing up on the last of the “survivors,” the prisoner wheezed at the nurse he’d been flirtatiously smiling at throughout the proceder. She leaned in, but he could not form words. Handing him a pen and paper, she watched as he scrawled out his message:
“Keep cutting…”
experiment