Chapter 4

  I had been driving for about an hour, and I could feel myself growing more irritable. I was never the type of person to find driving therapeutic. No, navigating these arbitrarily placed paths from one place to another was one of my least favorite things to do. Allocating all of my attention to the most boring task in the world. I highly anticipated a scientific breakthrough that would allow for the development of teleportation technology. This was an unrealistic dream, but I didn’t care. I reached a 4-way intersection, the most puzzling and agonizing invention ever produced by mankind. However, I was far from any form of civilization, so I did not have to obey the law. I just barreled through like it was nothing. Isobel audibly winced.

  “That’s dangerous, you know…”

  I did not care for this regard towards road regulations, but I respected Isobel’s perspective nonetheless. That is to say, I did not want to make her upset. Suddenly, the small screen behind my steering wheel lit up, and a beeping noise played. My car was critically low on gas. The dashboard may as well have just said “fuck you.” There were probably no gas stations out here for miles upon miles. This old car, coated in rust and scratches, would probably only last another 5 minutes, if that. I had to stop somewhere. Spotting an opening in the thick layer of trees, I pulled into a parking lot. There was only one other car here, and it was still on, with the driver side door wide open. The building I had parked in front of turned out to be a hospital, one that looked like it hadn’t seen a patient in years. At this moment, I wanted to scream. Taking this course of action would be very alarming, so I decided to just scream in my mind. It was hardly as satisfying as the real thing.

  “Why did we stop?”

  “I forgot to get gas.”

  “Well, shit. I guess we could look in there…”

  As we approached the front doors, Isobel retrieved a kitchen knife from one of her pockets. It was much more intimidating than the box cutter she had handed to me earlier. Somehow, this moment was inspiring to me. I grabbed my own knife from my back pocket, holding it by my side in a similar fashion. From the entrance, nine doors were visible: four on each side, and one directly ahead of us. The ground was littered with plastic waste and dirt, and bugs crawled around freely. Four of the nine doors had been boarded up, leaving only the right wall and the far door. We decided to try each door from front to back.

  Door number one. This door was locked, and we could not enter the room. None of the doors had any windows, so I couldn’t even see what was inside. However, I heard a faint noise from within the room that sounded like a strange machine, whirring and perhaps hammering something. It evoked a certain feeling within my mind, but it wasn’t immediately clear, and I didn’t particularly feel the urge to search further. Unlocking the answer to things like this required too much effort.

  Door number two. Unlike the previous room, the door to this one was not locked. Still, it took a bit of effort to open. Upon my success, I was greeted by a plethora of colorful toys and learning materials. Clearly, this room was for kids. It was odd to think that there was a time when this room could have been fully occupied by children, entranced by the endless world surrounding them. The thought overwhelmed me for a moment. How is it that the world just continues like that? Standing near the left side of the room, the sound from the first room was more audible.

  Door number three. This room was particularly strange because it had no obvious purpose to me. There were various bottles of medication, medical tools, and an assortment of objects like pillows and bedsheets, but there was no cohesive reason for it all to be there. In fact, some of the objects in the room were completely unidentifiable. There were posters on the walls written in languages that I did not understand or recognize. Standing in this room gave me an indescribable feeling, like an emotion that does not exist. The sound from the first room was almost inaudible, but it still had an undeniable presence. I was eager to leave this room.

  Door number four. This room was completely empty. Strangely, despite the hospital being abandoned, I did not get the sense that this room had once been populated; rather, I felt that it had been empty for a long time, waiting for someone to give it a purpose, to fill it with items and decorations. I had no reason to think that way, but it’s how I thought. The sound from the first room was no longer audible. I saw Isobel stand in the corner opposite to me and take out a bottle of pills from one of her pockets.

  “What’s that?” I asked. She didn’t seem like a sick person to me, but you’d never guess with a lot of people.

  “It’s medicine. I take it so I can be healthy.” For some reason, she sounded even more monotone. She opened the bottle and took about three pills, still holding the knife precariously between the bottle and her thumb.

  “Is something wrong, Isobel? If you’re worried about Blank, then don’t be. We could totally kick his ass together.”

  “No, no, that’s for later. I’m worried about this building that we’re in right now. It smells terrible, and I don’t like the way that door at the end of the hallway looks. There’s a dead deer behind that door. Its antlers were taken off.”

  “What? Isobel, I think you’re nice, but you say some weird things.” Isobel smiled for a split second, returning to her usual neutral expression before I could even stop speaking. “There's not going to be anything bad behind that door. It’ll just be some more hospital beds or something like that.”

  “Okay, Lewis. That door is bad, but if you wanna open it, I’ll come with you.”

  I approached the door, Isobel sheepishly standing a few feet behind me. This door was notably different from all the other doors in the building. While those doors were made of wood, this door was metallic and shiny. It had a small window that would have provided a view of the room, were it not for the piece of black construction paper haphazardly taped on. I pressed my ear against the door. There was no sound apart from the buzzing of the lights, but the smell of rotten eggs overwhelmed me. I flew back from the door, struggling to compose myself. Slowly, I put my hand on the door handle, each finger hesitating to wrap around the metal surface. It was wet. I didn’t want to admit it, but Isobel had a point. This place was bad news. My hand, and by extension the handle, rotated with the most gut-wrenching slowness imaginable. The door broke the silence with an absurdly loud creak that reminded me of cicadas. Not wanting to deal with this unknown horror for much longer, I decided to rip off the bandaid and just yank the door open. Two knives collided with the ground.

  “Oh, shit. That’s a corpse,” I thought aloud. I waited for a response from Isobel, but looking over, she was just standing there, motionless. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was slightly agape. Looking back at the corpse, I tried to make sense of what had happened here. This man’s body was facing the ceiling, with his arms and legs sprawled as if he were floating in a pool. In his right hand, there was a bottle of assorted pills that looked mostly empty, and in his left hand, there was a knife. The wrist opposite held a gash of no small significance. Cautiously, I walked towards the corpse to identify the face. To my mild surprise, I learned that this was the same man who had abandoned his apartment earlier. I looked back at Isobel.

  “Why did I- I didn't- This… shouldn't have. Happened? Fuck. I'm so sorry.” She balled her right hand into a fist and smacked herself in the forehead with enough force to create a loud noise. Deeply concerned, I put a hand on her shoulder.

  “What's wrong with you, Isobel? Don't feel bad about something you didn't do.”

  “I don't know what's wrong with me, Lewis. But there are plenty of things that it might be. Also, don't say this wasn't my fault! I knew him, I saw him everyday, I might have even talked to him once or twice-”

  “Isobel. This man went down a path that you had no way of stopping. Maybe you could have kept him around a little longer, but this was where he was headed. He seemed to have been a bit pathetic anyways, I mean, what else makes you do this? I don't want you to hate yourself over something you played no part in.”

  “Well, maybe I should have played a part. Would've had someone to talk to, at least. From your assumptions, he was quite the interesting man.”

  “The past is the past, Isobel. You can't change it, and it's always there.”

  “Plenty of things change all the time.”

  Isobel sat down and put her head in her hands. She didn't seem to be crying, but the spirit was definitely there. Fully on autopilot, I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. Even more surprisingly, her arm soon found itself around me. We sat there for a while, without words or many sounds at all. I could almost hear my own eyelashes. After what felt like forever, Isobel pulled out a pen and started writing on the floor. Letters were formed, and they almost began to form words, but the “words” would end every time they got close.

  “What are those? Are they words? I don't understand them.”

  “I'm following the path of the floor, and speech is being revealed. Maybe it doesn’t objectively mean anything, but it means something to me. It's comforting to listen to the world.”

  Soon, letters coated the floor around Isobel. Most of it was unreadable, but I could make out some words like “the” and “fish.” The lines still felt significant to me. After a little while, she stopped, putting the pen back into its pocket.

  “Did it end there?”

  “It never ends. It always has more to say. I just listen for as long as I need to. I feel a bit better now.”

  “Good. I care about you a lot, Isobel.”

  Isobel said nothing in response, but she made a noise that sounded happy. I smiled, glad that I was able to improve her mood just a little bit. Suddenly, I remembered our situation.

  “We should probably leave. It smells like death in here.”

  “Aren't you all out of gas? How are we gonna fix that? And don't you dare say anything about stealing this poor man's car.”

  “No. We're just gonna siphon some gas. But I, uh... Don’t have a gas siphon.”

  Isobel looked around the room. Her eyes lit up when she saw a power cable plugged into an outlet, long separated from the machine it had been powering. She yanked it out of the wall and held it out in front of me.

  “We could cut off the ends of this and use it as a tube!”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.” It was not, in fact, what I was thinking, but I wanted Isobel to think that I was on the same page as her.

  Isobel picked up her knife and used it to chop off the ends of the cable, careful not to electrocute herself. Noticing this, I picked up my knife too, because I'd hate to lose it. We walked outside, and with some tinkering and a bit of gasoline in my mouth, we got enough fuel into my car to last the rest of the drive. Isobel and I got into our seats.

  “You know, that place was awful. We should never go anywhere like that again,” Isobel said, head against the car door.

  “It's okay. We got what we needed in there, and made it out just fine.”

  “Just fine… I don't think I'll forget about that. The body.”

  “I understand.”

  I started driving, not particularly bothered by the activity.