On the door/desktop are four shallow plastic bins. The first bin is full of wooden blocks shaped like miniature logs, each with notches carved into their ends, and some have notches in their middles. Displayed on the screen is a schematic—images and numbers only—detailing how you are to proceeded in building a cabin.
“Aren’t these some kind of child’s toy?”
“The activities progress in difficulty.”
The second bin is full of colored squares of paper. The third bin holds an assortment of metal nuts, bolts, wheels, struts, gears, rubber belts, and rivets. The fourth bin is the largest and it overflows with oddly shaped pieces of wood and tools.
“With the third bin you’ll use a screwdriver. The fourth bin, you will use a drill, a hammer, and a handsaw. The tools are stowed beneath the table. Do you have any questions before you start with bin one?”
There is something about the makeshift collection-of-spare-parts table that troubles you. It hints at a larger problem or issue in regard to your situation, one that remains beyond your grasp.
“Someone made this table.”
“Well, yes. Someone made everything, ______.”
“That’s not what I mean—”
“You may now begin with the first bin.”
“Did you make this table?”
“No.”
“Did I make it before—before I woke up here?”
“You did not make it. But if you’d like, after some practice, you can make a better one.”
You rub your face with your hands. For some reason this answer, more than any of her other questions and answers and nonanswers, makes you boil over with frustration. “Hey, how do you know I won’t hurt myself with the tools?”
“You’ll have to be careful. I trust you’ll do fine.”
“No, I mean, how do you know I won’t hurt myself on purpose?”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I am desperate. Because despite everything you say it is clear that I am a prisoner.”
“You will not hurt yourself, because you are not a prisoner. I can’t say that strenuously enough.”
You bend under the table and grab the screwdriver and handsaw. You stand and brandish them, shake them in the air. You feel powerful and weak at the same time. “I feel like a prisoner. I don’t feel like we’re in this, whatever this is, together.”
“We were partners before the Facility and we are partners now, ______. Please, I understand your frustrations. I do. I know it’s impossible to fully understand, but everything I’m doing is to help you fully regain yourself, but it has to be done piece by piece, bit by bit, and not all at once.”
“I demand that you show me and tell me more about me, about you, about us, about everything, or I will do something drastic—” You lean on the table with your left forearm facing up, exposed. You place the handsaw against your wrist. The teeth are sharp. You don’t know if you can or will drag the saw across your skin, but you want to.
“Please, ______, this is not necessary. I will start showing you more videos, I promise. I was planning to show you more about me and us anyway, because—and you have to believe me—you’re doing so well, and we’re getting so close to you walking through the door.”
“And where will I go after walking through the door?” You briefly add pressure to the saw before taking it away. The row of indents in your skin is perfectly formed.
“You and I will go to our house.”
“The old brown one?”
“Yes.”
You want to ask if you can go to the house now, but you don’t. You know Anne would say not yet. Then you would place the saw against your wrist again and before you could continue making threats and bargaining, Anne would say, “If you hurt yourself, you won’t go to the brown house. If you cut yourself with the saw, you’ll pass out from loss of blood. Maybe you’d wake up strapped to your bed and maybe you wouldn’t wake up at all.”
028
You’ve watched and now, by your request, re-watched these videos for two days straight. The home videos feature Anne. The earliest ones are of a low quality; their images are blurry and the colors simultaneously washed out and too bright. As the Anne in the videos grows older, the video quality increases.
Anne, eighteen months old, sits in the grass and pats a sleeping brown-and-white beagle. Off camera her uncle Dennis tries to get her to say “shit.” She says, “Sit.”
Anne, four years old, arms wrapped around the neck of her older brother, Matt. He plays video games and does not succumb to her “play with me” demands.
Anne, six years old, jumps up and down behind a birthday cake. Her hair is straight and short, and her smile is gap-toothed. Everyone in the room is singing.
Anne, nine years old, rides her bike toward a small ramp (plywood atop a milk crate) her brother and his friends set up in the street in front of her house. Off camera her parents argue about whether they should stop her. Anne awkwardly rumbles over the ramp. The bike lands front tire first and the bike wobbles, almost fishtails into the curb, but Anne corrects her course and glides away with a fist raised in the air.
Anne, twelve years old, is sitting next to her brother at a picnic table. It’s Matt’s combination eighteenth birthday and graduation from high school party. Anne is so skinny and slight compared to her newly minted adult sibling. She doesn’t laugh at his jokes as he reads the gift and graduation cards. She sulks, her chin held up by her fists.
Anne, fourteen years old, hits a game-winning three-pointer for her AAU basketball team. She’s mobbed by her smiling teammates.
Anne, fifteen years old, good-naturedly smiles as friends sign the wrap around her post-surgery knee.
Anne, sixteen years old, is with her Brain Bee teammates at an international high school competition in Montreal. Only a sophomore, she’s already the lead student in the histology component of the competition. She is bent over a microscope, racing to identify as many slides of brain and nervous tissues and their functions as the ticking clock allows. She wears eye black stickers on her cheeks, and she convinced her teammates to do the same. She high-fives her partners at the end of their victorious round.
Anne (the one from now) mutters something over the intercom speakers that you don’t fully hear or understand, and then she fast-forwards through the rest of the videos, ones you have already memorized: prom, high school graduation, moving into her college dorm, Anne with college friends getting ready to go out, one video from inside a lab with Anne and her friend Isabella, both dressed in white lab coats, choreographed dancing and lip-syncing to “I Am a Scientist” by the Dandy Warhols, college graduation, moving into her first apartment, Anne speaking at a memorial for her grandmother, Anne walking the stage when she earned her PhD, a slew of family holidays with her relatives multiplying and aging before your eyes.
Anne says, “Fuck this.”
You aren’t sure what’s happening. You don’t know why she sounds so upset. You ask, “Is there something wrong, Anne? Are you okay?”
“I can’t—I can’t watch these again. I’ve seen them so goddamn many times… I’m sorry. Let’s, um, skip to the last one. We’ll just watch the last one a few times.”
“Did I do something wrong? Did I do something to upset you?”
“No. You’ve been—near perfect, ______.”
“Near perfect?”
“I mean you’ve been as perfect as you can be.”