Silence Falls

Bam and Cris were dropped off in their room by Bert and Otep who left a minute after to retire to their own before the staff got up to pass out the morning medications. After quickly crawling into bed, the boys both surprisingly fell fast asleep. An hour passed before a staff member loudly banged on their door with their baton to wake them up. Cris was instantly up despite their nightly adventure because of the explosive sound on metal, but Bam wasn’t moving, having only turned over in his deep sleep when the staff entered and beat him awake before Cris could try to warn him. It took three hits to have him up and curled against his wall to satisfy them that he was up and wander off out of their room to rouse the other patients still asleep. Cris checked on him as best as he could, but Bam was beyond livid and yelled at him to back off. Leaving him alone, Cris went on with fixing his own bed quickly to get it out of the way so he could help Bam with his. By then the temperamental blue eyes boy was a bit calmer and accepted a helping hand with a grunt. When that chore was done, Cris escorted Bam down the hall to the security booth where they were given their morning pills that were a requirement for all patients to take. Bam’s pill was red that day and Cris’s pill was blue. They almost never got the same pill twice. It gave Cris and his friends the idea that the staff just handed out random pills without a care to whether it would help their patient’s ailments or not.

“What the hell is your pill for?” Bam asked his roommate, curiously as to what drug Cris was given since he didn’t seem at all like other lunatics in line with them that clearly needed them more.

“Whatever they find in their inventory, I guess. Some days they make me sleepy, other days they make me sad. I’m not sure what it’s even meant to do for me to be honest, just supposed to make me crazy in the end when my brain finally liquifies from all of it.” Cris shrugged as he leads Bam down to the cafeteria behind and in front of other patients that were either talking to themselves, making weird noises, or twitching ever minute. Cris paid them no mind, and so Bam tried not to as well.

The cafeteria was bigger than Bam originally remembered it was the night before when he, Cris, and Bert were scrambling through it in the dark to hide from the security guards patrolling it. Every patient of every race and age were in there sitting still and behaving to the best that their demented minds could allow them. Maybe the intimidation from the huge behemoths watching their every move made it easy for them to stay out of trouble, Bam didn’t really know. The very first table near the stairs sat Demi, Alexis, Otep, Bert, Onika, and Natasha eating their breakfast. Cris and Bam filled their trays with food before sitting down with them.

“Alright, meeting is officially in order.” Bert lightly jested to himself amusement before clearing his throat and looking around at the ladies that hadn’t joined them on their late-night exploration with a now somber expression. “Anyway, I think you all need to be informed of our little adventure last night.”

“Where did you guys go to now?” Onika asked inquisitively, licking the sticky maple syrup from her pancakes off her fingertips.

“Last night, when Bam and I were asleep we got a visit from Bert. Turns out Otep had been missing all this time and he needed help in finding out if she was possibly taken down to Solitary Confinement.” Cris started off the story before jerking his thumb towards his roommate next to him. “Bam ended up joining us in our search to find her and together we traveled down to the confinement floor where we found Connor still alive in one of the cells!”

Alexis eyes widened along with the other girls. “Oh my god, he’s still alive!?”

“Yeah! Isn’t that great?” Cris cheered as minimally as he could while all the girls sighed with relief and smiled in mutual excitement. Beside him, Bam rolled his eyes and wondered to himself how they could care for a cannibalistic animal such as Connor after knowing what he had done to all those innocent children?

“Anyway, we found an elevator in the chapel room that the staff hadn’t ever used before to my knowledge. Turns out that the damn cross in there is actually a hidden elevator door that travels to a lower floor farther beneath this underground facility.” Bert told the rest, earning intrigued attentions from the others that hadn’t been a witness to such discoveries.

“Whoa, is that where you were hiding all this time Otep?” Natasha asked her, chewing on a cold softly cooked tatter-tot.

Otep nodded in response before lowering her eyes back down to her own tray, piling food onto her spork. “I don’t remember how I got down there though, at least not in much details. What little I can recall is the 20 minutes it took for Bert and the others to find me down there...at least I think it took them that long. I don’t remember how long my own ass was stuck down there.” She shook her in confusion before dismissing the mystery off with a careless shrug and moving on with her story. “I tried hiding in the chapel when I escaped from my room in Solitary Confinement. That idiot guard had left my door unlocked after he had his fun beating my ass. I couldn’t do that lovely session again with him especially not knowing what he’d end up doing to me next. I wasn’t going to stick and around and stay.”

Everyone was silent, giving her a moment to escape those physically abusive and traumatic memories and enjoy her breakfast in any way she can. The food was edible, but poorly cooked and with very little effort put into it.

Seeing that Otep wasn’t going to go further into her own experience down there, Bert went on for her after chewing on his bruised apple. He decided to skip the terrifying elevator fall that had him, Bam and Cris convinced they were going to die. It didn’t seem necessary to mention it also…Bert was beginning to wonder if it even happened or if the medication they were constantly being fed daily was finally showing indication of damages to their brains. “We found her on down on the lowest floor that that elevator with the cross took us to. There was this long hallway with boarded up doors, and an even bigger door at the end that was unlocked so heavily you would think it held the last remaining dinosaur stored behind it. Anyway, we manage to get inside only to discover what we thought was a huge life-size Jesus on a cross place against one of the walls but was instead a living breathing person!”

“Oh my god!” Alexis gasped in shock, placing a hand on her uneasy stomach at the image of the poor soul in her mind. “They weren’t dead?”

“What did they look like?” Demi curiously asked, enthralled by the story of last night’s events as she picked up her milk box and took a sip.

“Oh, he was very much alive!” Bert answered Alexis first, having polished off the last of his breakfast. He now turned his attention to Demi to reply to her question. “His face was covered, and we didn’t have time to remove him from the cross, or reveal his identity much less question him before it was time for the staff to get up and make their rounds. We don’t even know if he’s a crazy person recently brought down there to die of starvation or something. For now, I was hoping we could discuss this as a group first before I moved forward.” Bert’s eyes trailed over each of their faces. “Tonight, I’m going back down there to see if this guy is sane like us or just another nutjob better left to die down there. If there is a chance his brain is still intact I have to know for certain. If he is…do you guys think it would be right to take him with us when we get out of here, or leave him behind to fend for himself? I repeat, this is a GROUP decision, not just for the four of us that found him to decide his fate. I have to know how you ladies feel about this too.”

“Well, if he’s sane, I believe we should take him with us.” Alexis replied first after they all took a moment to glance at each other and read their facial expressions which was something they had perfected over the years. It became a permanent way of communication when the staff were around. On either side of Alexis; Demi, Onika, and Natasha all nodded in agreement with her decision. Bert, Cris and Otep concurred as well, except for Bam, who took to messing with the tiny potato chunk inside of his last tatter-tot.

“So, what kind of floor is that one supposed to be used for exactly?” Onika asked Bert inquisitively. “Do you have any idea?”

Bert shook his head and lean over to whisper to them. “No, and that’s the fucking weird part about it. I have studied this entire underground prison since I’ve been thrown in here. I have studied the staff’s ways and what time they do this and do that. I know everything that goes on here like the back of my hand. And yet the maps and blueprints to this place have absolutely no floors underneath the Solitary Confinement, none whatsoever. That floor that we found Otep and that guy on, whatever the hell it’s for, isn’t supposed to exist.”

Demi shivered as a chill went down her spine. She brushed it off and offered a probable theory. “Maybe it’s part of an older blueprint of this place or something. Like it could be an abandoned floor they decided not to put into the blueprints or something because they didn’t plan on using it for anything so they didn’t feel the need to draw it out, or perhaps it’s existence is lost with the original blueprints from when it was first created?”

Otep couldn’t hold herself back from disagreeing with Demi’s hypothesis. “No, they’d have to have that shit down on the blueprints despite its age.”

The group remained silent, thinking deeply on why that floor had remained undiscovered for so long. They all felt Otep was right that the floor would have put on the blueprints regardless. At least they couldn’t think of any reason why anyone would want to leave that whole floor. Why not put that on the blueprints if they wanted to build it in the first place? Was it somehow forgotten along the way throughout the construction process or was that too farfetched of an idea to even be considered a legitimate reason?