"Someone Pretty Like You"

Some days I wake up and seem to go through the motions of a normal day, but something feels off. This was one of those days. My doctor’s appointment was in an exclusive building owned by a world famous investor. Upon arrival, the building appeared ramshackle, and the parking garage didn’t have an attendant.

I thought to myself, “Free parking in this real estate mogul’s capitalist regime?”

It didn’t make sense. In the parking garage, I peered into the regal statue emblem of a Rolls Royce, parked alongside a Hyundai. The parking lot was silently speaking the contradictions of Palm Beach County. The elite, grandiose spectacle parked adjacent to a ratty car that it could very easily scratched with the scathing irresponsibility of the middle class. Driving a Hyundai myself I felt like I was somehow branded into the lower social order. I walked alone, almost shamefully to my free consultation at the plastic surgeon's office. No one was there.

My appointment was at ten o’clock. Rationally I wondered out loud if I could be the first appointment. My caffeine ridden dehydrated body yearned for a ladies room. Surely there would be one available in the office building. I quickly climbed up the first flight of stairs; no one was on that floor either. I ran down the stairs and looked at the directory. I noticed that the leasing office was on the 3rd floor. I always take the stairs, but even so, the elevator was eerily broken, so I jogged my way up to the third floor. There was music, but no other signs of life. I pulled on the door to go back downstairs, and it was locked.
A chill ran thru my body, I quickly made my way to what I thought was the exit.

Instead I was cascading up an endless stair case with locked doors, and felt as if I had entered in an alternate reality. Why did all the doors lead to nowhere?
Finally I found a door that opened to the outside. Strangely, I stepped down on unsteady scaffolding and had to regain my balance so I could run to my car. I was never more excited to see the obnoxious Roll’s Royce idol greeting me in the face, smirking with its elitist smirk.

Restlessly I made my way to the bagel shop to wake up with an espresso, and rye bagel. The clerk behind the counter barely acknowledged my presence; perhaps she was still asleep too. Inside though, I got a peculiar feeling of isolation in this morning crowd. No smiles were offered from other patrons or the servers. Instead their penetrating stares grated into my very existence.
I questioned to myself whether I was still asleep lazily dreaming away in bed,
only to awaken with the sunlight beaming thru my window.

My mind started to wander, delving deep into the pits of anxiety and insanity.
Is it possible that death had overtaken my body in the dimension that I was formerly residing in? Perhaps I had been catapulted into this desolate land of intrusive glares, and was the object of their raging animosity.
On the surface my thought patterns may have extruded excessive psychotic paranoia, but after what I had just experienced in the desolate building; I wondered if it was a possibility.

I went back to the doctor’s office and still no one was there. I wasn’t going to take the stairs again. Abruptly, someone grabbed my arm. I turned to see an empty faced woman trying to speak through muffled words. I realized that her mouth seemed to be sewn shut, and screamed. Her eyes exhibited a sadness I had never encountered. I felt bad for screaming and searched in my purse for a pen and scrap paper.

The words she wrote down were, “Did you get lost on the staircase?”

I wrote “No, I got out, are you okay?”

With that her eyes reflected sheer terror, and she scrolled the words
"Once you get lost on the staircase you can never get out.”

I wrote, “I escaped; I didn’t get lost. I jumped down on that scaffolding over there, I left and got breakfast.”

Her eyes grew more alarmed, and she wrote, “They stared at you, at that bagel shop, didn’t they?”

I wrote, “Yes, but I think they were just tired.”

She wrote, “They know you are next on his list.”

Scared, I wrote, “Next on his list? Who is he? What is he going to do to me?”

She wrote, “Whatever he pleases.”

I wrote back asking for the second time, “Who is he?”

She wrote, “The doctor. I wouldn’t stop screaming so he sewed my mouth shut.
I have been trying to get out now for a week.”

Puzzled, but knowing there had to be some truth to her story, I wrote, “There is no one here. I showed up for my appointment and everyone is gone.”

She wrote “He never comes in until you show up at the Bagel Shop first.
He needs his workers to check you out first to see if you are what he desires.”

I wrote, again puzzled, “What does he desire?”

She wrote “Someone he can control and dominate. Someone pretty, like you,” and with that the woman disappeared into the morning air.

I started pinching myself to see if I was in a dream. I walked back to my car and made the decision to get the hell out of there. I made it to my car still gracefully parked across from that gaudy Rolls. I drove out of the parking lot as fast as I could, and the next thing I remembered I was back at the bagel shop.I didn’t go inside; I decided I would drive to the beach, but the next thing I knew I was back at Dr. Whitley’s. I refused to go into the office building again. Would I spend forever traipsing back and forth between the office and the bagel shop?
Maybe the mysterious woman was right and there really was no way out. I was tired and drifted into a sound dreamless sleep.

I awoke in a chair inside Dr. Whitley’s office, with my clothes strewn across the floor. It was cold, and as I attempted to pick my clothes up off the floor, I noticed the lock on the door. Had I been here the whole time? What kind of strange pipe dream illusion was this? Then mid-thought; the doctor himself, entered the room with surgeon’s sheers in his hand, and advised me not to worry because he was going to perform the breast reduction I had desired.

He wondered why I wanted one and asked, "Why would you want a reduction with your beautifully sculpted breasts and tiny waist? I have clients that pay thousands to look like you. You are such a beautiful young woman.”

I didn’t answer and thought his comments were highly inappropriate for a medical professional. I most certainly didn’t want him to perform the surgery,
especially right there in his office with no anesthesia.I closed my eyes wishing I was home instead of staring into the eyes of this lunatic doctor. I didn’t want to scream for fear that I would face the same fate as the woman outside. Despite the immense physical pain, I pretended to be somewhere else as he made his cuts, and stitches.

When he was through, he took me by the hand through a labyrinth of stairs. Finally we reached a dark, dingy room at the bottom where there were several holding cells. He locked me in one of the cells, assuring me that he would be
back to see that I was comforted in my agony. Despite, his depravity, he was polite, and sounded genuine in lieu his actions. His unrelenting tactfulness while committing atrocities made him all the more nefarious.

I looked around and saw a dozen other women in cages some with their mouths sewn shut like the woman outside, as well as others like me, that did not speak. Their eyes spoke horrors amidst the silence. It was apparent some of the women have been down in this room for years. There was no way out.
The one woman who was successful was forever trapped to wander grounds of the building offering only a useless warning. I wondered why she wasn’t able to just run away. Maybe, she too, felt a sense of institutional comfort in this agony. Anyway, by the time she appeared it had already been too late.

I still didn't know how I got here, and why there was way out. I know that I have here for what feels like an eternity. I have not healed, and have not aged.
I am in bondage to the doctor, and have reluctantly accepted my fate to make it bearable. I am his favorite so he is less harsh. I obey like a good girl, and he doesn’t hurt me as much. He loves it when I comply. I honestly don’t know what it would be like to be outside again. I feel as if I am in limbo, half dead; half alive.

He brings in other girls about once a month and the dungeon where we reside is now crowded with at least one hundred girls. Some girls have very tiny cages; they are the ones that don’t submit to his demands. I have never tried to resist. I can tell some of the women think of me as a coward, but I think of myself as a survivalist. Some girls have perished and thankfully he has removed their bodies. He puts them in a fiery furnace in the next room. Some think that death would be freedom from this and don’t want to prolong their horror. I think that someday out of the last shred of sanity he will let us out or someone will discover us. Still, I have gone crazy down here in the basement. I am strangely attached to the doctor, and in some ways have learned to love him.
He provides me with food, water, and tells me I am pretty despite my scars.
I live for pain he inflicts because it is the only way I know I am still alive. I have learned to love the pain. I live in delusions to get through the days. Even though my lips were never sewn shut, I have not spoken a word since the very first day I was subjected to this fate.

******

Hidden behind her husbands solemn face were the tears he choked back in disbelief. His wife, so vibrant and young was gone. She had just gone in for breast reduction surgery. No one had told him it was such a dangerous surgery, or he would have stopped her. All she wanted was to be able to have a day without back pain, and now the life within her was gone. He held her limp, cold hand in his, and thought to himself that he could not go on without her.




©2008 Pisces Halcyon