“Room Fifteen S&R,” he said. The halls were still crowded. Some of the inmates moved aside as we approached. Swig paid them no attention, walked briskly. Midway down the hall, he stopped and inspected the key ring. He was wearing short sleeves, and I noticed how muscled his forearms were. The bulky, sinewed arms of a laborer, not a bureaucrat.
Double dead bolts fastened the door. The hatch was also key-locked.
Milo said, “Fifteen S&R. Suppression and Restraint?”
“Not because he needs it,” said Swig, still shuffling through the keys. “The S&R rooms are smaller, so when a patient lives alone we sometimes use them. He lives alone because his hygiene’s not always what it should be.” Swig began shoving keys up the ring. Finally, he found what he was looking for and stabbed both locks. The tumblers clicked; he held the door open six inches and looked inside.
Swinging it back, he said, “He’s all yours.”
Six-by-six space. Unlike the hallways, generous ceilings- ten feet high or close to it.
More of a tube than a room.
High on the walls were mounted thick metal rings- fasteners for the iron shackles now coiled up against the plaster like techno-sculpture.
Soft walls, pinkish white, covered with some kind of dull-looking foam. Faint scuff marks said the material couldn’t be ripped.
Dim. The only light came through a tiny plastic window, a skinny, vertical rectangle that aped the shape of the room. Two round, recessed ceiling bulbs under thick plastic covers were turned off. No internal switch, just the one out in the hall. A
lidless plastic toilet took up one corner. Precut strips of toilet paper littered the floor.
No nightstand, no real furniture, just two plastic drawers built into the foam walls. Molded. No hardware.
Music came from somewhere in the ceiling. Sugary strings and belching horns-some long-forgotten forties pop tune in a major key, done by a band that didn’t care.
On a thin mattress attached to a raised plastic platform sat… something.
Naked from the waist up.
Skin the color of whey, blue-veined, hairless. Ribs so deeply etched they evoked a turkey carcass the day after Thanksgiving.
Khaki pants covered his bottom half, bagging on stick legs, stretching over knees as knobby as hand-carved canes. His feet were bare but dirty, the nails untrimmed and brown. His head was shaved clean. Black stubble specked his chin and cheeks. Very little stubble on top said he’d gone mostly bald.
His cranium was strangely contoured: very broad on top, the hairless skull flat at the apex, furrowed in several places, as if a child’s fingers had dragged their way through white putty. Under a bulging shelf of a brow, his eyes were lost in moon-crater sockets. Gray lids, caved-in cheeks. Below the zygomatic arch, the entire face tapered radically, like a too-sharpened pencil.
The room smelled foul. Vinegary sweat, flatulence, burning rubber. Something dead.
The music played on, nice bouncy dance tune in waltz time.
“Ardis?” said Swig.
Peake’s head stayed down. I bent low, caught a full view of his face. Tiny mouth, pinched, lipless. Suddenly it filled: a dark, wet tongue tip showing itself as a liver-colored oval. The tongue retreated. Reappeared. Peake’s cheeks bellowed, caved in, inflated again. He rolled his neck to the left. Eyes closed, mouth open. Lots of teeth missing.
Swig stepped closer, came within three feet of the bed.
Peake’s head dropped and he looked down at the floor again. His nose was short, very thin-not much more than a wedge of cartilage-and bent up to the left. More putty, the child twisting capriciously. Large but lobeless ears flared bat-tishly. Narrow, vein-encrusted hands ended in tentacle fingers that curled over his knees.
Living skeleton. I’d seen a face like that somewhere….
Peake’s tongue darted again. He started to rock. Moved his head from side to side.
Rolled his neck. Blinked spasmodically. More tongue thrusts.
The mouth had flattened, gone two-dimensional. Moistened by saliva, the lips materialized-port-wine slash in the center of the triangle, vivid against the doughy skin.
It opened again and the tongue extended completely- thick, purplish, mottled, like some cave-dwelling slug.
It hung in the air. Curled. Wagged from side to side. Zipped back.