Simple Commands

Content Warning: this story contains strong language, mild body horror and declining mental health

The room was bright and sterile, the white walls and blinding fluorescent lights were almost hospital-like, though there was no medical equipment to speak of. There wasn’t much of anything to speak of in the 240 square foot space, in one corner a blanket and pillow laid on the floor in a makeshift bed, adjacent to that was a toilet. In the middle of the room, taking most of the space as the centerpiece, was a large metal table held up not by four legs, but by a metal tube in the middle, doubling as a means to deliver meals. On the far wall was a white, magnetically sealed door with a white CRTV mounted above it, a white static screen tying the theme together.

Subject Eighteen sat at the table, waiting for the screen to change. Time was hard to tell in the room but this felt like the right time. Any moment now the buzzer would sound and the hole in the table would open and he would finally be able to eat. His bloodshot eyes ached, he hadn’t looked away from that bright, burning screen in possibly hours. He hadn’t blinked in almost just as long. He was silent, aside from the rumble in his stomach, which matched the buzzing of the lights above. It was almost time. It had to be, he was behaving! He had done everything that damn screen had told him to for, what he assumed to be, weeks! He just wanted some real food, something to tide him over just a little bit longer. Certainly the year had to be up soon, right?

His traitorous eyelids finally collapsed in on themselves, the moisture stung worse than the after image of the screen seared into his retinas. The ache was almost all encompassing, almost immediately turning into a migraine he would never be able to relieve. Still, he forced his eyes back open, he couldn’t miss the command. He ran his hand through his grease-matted hair a few times before sucking on his fingers. They haven’t punished him for this yet and it kept the rumbling at bay. He longed to shed his sweat soaked shirt and suck on that for a while but he didn’t dare obstruct his vision any longer than necessary. Even the burning sensation in his throat wasn’t enough to move him to the toilet tank, though it made his attempt at tricking his stomach harder.

Eighteen had been in a much less contemptible state at the beginning of the experiment. Meals and commands were consistent and while his sleeping situation hadn’t been ideal, it was still better than being woken up at an ungodly hour in the morning because his girlfriend was getting sick. Three square meals a day, some silly puzzle or exercising task and then he was left alone to his own devices. It had been a pretty sweet gig for the first few days. He just had to do this for a year and then not only would he get his whole year’s worth of salary, but the baby should already be past some of their stickier parts of development.

A buzzer would wake him every morning and the monitor would display the time so he could keep track, and the lights would flicker on after being turned off when it was time to

SLEEP

the monitor displaying

WAKE

in bold black letters, violently contrasting with the white background. It would sound again at mealtimes.

EAT

Tasks would come in with a chime and a helpful diagram on the screen; children’s word puzzles, origami, jumping jacks, things that would keep him mentally and physically engaged, he had been told. He figured it was to keep him from going crazy in confinement. But for the most part, he had been handling it well. Other than his girlfriend, Eighteen had spent most of his time alone anyhow, save for the time he spent online. He lurked on most websites, but he had a few online friends he really had a connection with. More so than the guys that his girlfriend’s friends dated, most of them also making or having already been transitioned into the potions of ‘pushover’ and ‘mr. mom’. He was going to enjoy his nine months plus of personal freedom until he lost his spine thank you very much.

The rhythm became familiar, almost comforting, he would wake, eat, do a task, eat again, do another task, and sleep before doing it all over again the next day. He even began waking and going to bed at the same time the buzzer went off everyday. Maybe that’s why it was so jarring when the pattern changed.

Eighteen had thought he had dreamt it, that he had been hearing the buzzer in his sleep. After all the monitor displaying

WAKE

wasn’t also displaying the time and date like it normally did. He situated himself back into his makeshift bed and closed his eyes again.

The buzzer sounded longer and louder the second time, a prolonged ringing in his ears along with the flash bang of the lights turning on.

WAKE

“The fuck guys, this isn’t funny!” Eighteen cursed at whatever camera he knew was watching him, rubbing furiously at his eyelids to clear his vision. Blinking away the blind spots he looked up at the monitor once more.

EAT

The familiar metallic scrape of the little door on the table opening caught his attention. He looked over at the dull white plate where, instead of his pretty well balanced meals so far, sat a single strawberry. Plump and blood red, the fruit looked almost over-ripe, the green leaves absent presumably for his convenience. Eighteen found himself looking around the empty room and back to the plate.

“Are you serious? Is the some kind of-”

The buzzer sounded again, louder and more insistent.

EAT

“Fuck, fine!” He shouted over the sound storming over and grabbed the fruit from the plate, the buzzer cutting off abruptly. He popped the strawberry into his mouth where it burst, the flesh so tender his teeth barely grazed it before the start juice filled his mouth. He coughed a little as he swallowed and wiped away some juice that escaped the corner of his mouth before he looked back at the screen instinctively. He expected to be able to go back to bed after this strange interruption of the norm.

EAT

“There’s nothing else there.” He told the monitor, not really knowing where else to direct the grievance. He knew he was being monitored himself, was told so by the hot doctor lady that was running the isolation experiment, he just didn’t know how. Maybe there was a camera in the lights or somewhere on the CRTV, he hadn’t thought to ask. Still, the command was unchanging.

EAT

“There is nothing else there.” He repeated, emphasizing each word he spoke, gesturing to the dull white plate.

EAT

“Okay, screw this…” Eighteen muttered, turning back to the makeshift bed. He was too tired to deal with some jackass scientist that had nothing better to do in the middle of the night.

The third time the buzzer sounded, it was deafening, drawing out on the highest note, it brought Eighteen to his knees. He pressed the palms of his hands to his ears, eyes watering as the sound penetrated them to echo around in his head. And it dragged on for so long, he felt like he was laying his head next to a train track while the world’s longest bullet train went by.

What felt like a half hour later, the buzzer cut off abruptly once more. Eighteen wasn’t sure at what point he ended up in the fetal position but he stayed there for a long while. It took some time for the fear that he might have actually gone deaf to reach him through the ringing in his ears and he forced himself to look up.

The lights had gone down again, the only light coming from the white-grey static of the CRTV illuminating the room. Eighteen didn’t bother standing in fear of angering the sadistic scientist, and army crawled over to his bed.

Food stopped coming all together after that.

The buzzer would still go off, he would still get the command

EAT

but all that would come up was the dull white ceramic plate. Not even water, making him resort to drinking from the tank of the toilet and sometimes the buzzer would punish him for that too. Sometimes the plate would sit there for hours, sometimes that elongated buzzer would go off for the same amount of time. Eighteen found himself flinching when it didn’t, his body lurching with the anticipation of it. He found himself sucking on the collar of his shirt, the chemicals from the fabric and spit being barely enough to quiet the desperate clawing in his stomach.

The tasks got harder and stranger too. Replacing the children’s word puzzles were complicated math equations he never learned in school and trivia that felt too hard for even the most successful Jeopardy contestants would be stumbling to answer. Exercises went from light cardio and maintaining his body to full on sprints around the room and climbing burpees.

There hadn’t been a night since where he wasn’t woken up by that goddamned buzzer either. Tasks, exercises, for fucking kicks, it would just go off for no reason at any time. He had been exhausted to tears more times than he could count and he just wanted to sleep or eat.

Time lost all meaning before long, but he estimated that it was at least a week since food last came up. The edges of his shirt collar were frayed and Eighteen wasn’t sure how much longer he could trick his stomach into thinking it was full. His skin was oily and grimy, along with food they had stopped sending anything that he could use for personal hygiene. That didn’t matter, the oil his skin produced worked just as well as his shirt, better sometimes.

He felt too weak to do tasks, they stopped coming in about a day before. He had spent the entire night, maybe two, sitting at the big metal table just staring at the staticy TV screen and sucking on his t-shirt. He had done everything the damned screen had said. That had to be enough for him to get food now. It felt like it had been enough, it felt like it was time.

The sound of scraping metal made Eighteen jolt and he looked down. He felt his heart jump to his throat as the plate was pushed up through the tube, no buzzer accompanying it. What came up wasn’t empty either. An unappetizing mound of grey-tan goop that smelt vaguely of bananas.

EAT

And Eighteen did so with abandon.

The goop was mushy and had some weird flecks of green and orange mixed in. Despite the banana smell, it only tasted about as sweet as liquid glue and went down with the same consistency.

It was the best thing he had ever eaten in his life.

From there the pattern repeated. Eighteen would be deprived of food and forced to do impossible tasks until it became obvious to him that total obedience to the buzzer was his only option. Only then would he be allowed to

SLEEP

only after he completed every task, every command from the monitor. Only if he was patient, then Eighteen could

EAT.

So here he sat, head pounding, throat and eyes burning, staring at the monitor and sucking the oil from his fingers.

A whooshing sound could be heard, but it wasn’t the metal scrap of the table’s built in dumbwaiter so he ignored it, still waiting for the monitor to tell him what to do to earn himself some real food. However, something obstructed his view, moving back and forth. It took Eighteen a moment to realize it was a hand, and longer to realize that it was much too small to be his own.

“-yler. Tyler, baby, come on, look at me.” The voice was soft, far away and desperate. Eighteen blinked once, twice, finally pulling his attention from the CRTV to a figure trying to bring his focus to her. She was short, and as his vision refocused he realized her hair was a pretty strawberry blonde, her brown eyes filled with tears that kept spilling over. She was also heavily pregnant.

“Margot…” He murmured. Had it finally been a year? But shouldn’t the baby…

Eighteen looked over at the monitor again, this time the time display was visible, dated a week after his last memory of it. A scientist had followed Margot in, muttering something about his ‘catatonic state’ and how they kept trying to get his attention. He barely heard the other man as Margot pulled him to his feet.

“Come on, Tyler, lets go home, baby…” She coaxed as he oriented himself. “Forget the money, okay? Let’s go home and get you a shower and something to”

EAT

The sound of scraping metal drew his attention to the table once more, Margot and the scientist voices fading to the background as they spoke about his condition. The plate that came up this time was empty, save for a steak knife.

Margot pulled her cardigan tighter across her pregnant stomach as she spoke to the scientist , a fuzzy white thing covered in strawberries.

The knife shook in Eighteen’s hand as he looked from her stomach to the CRTV where a singular word sat violently against the white backdrop.

Margot turned back to him, voice wavering with panic and concern as she spoke for the last time.

“Baby?”

EAT.