“So… unless you people want to bring in some much cooler guys than these, I’ll maintain my secret crushes on 5 and 9. 5’s waiting for me outside right now; after I’m done in here we’ll be doing some more exploring. We’re going to see if there’s anything interesting on the upper floors of that moldy old brick building. Heh… maybe she’ll get spooked over there and hug me, and I can comfort her.”
“So where did you disappear to?” 2 asked 3 as they set out walking together, on what had become their daily stroll. They were later than usual, today.
“I just needed to be alone for a little while, to think about some things.”
“Was I one of the things you were thinking about?” He made it sound like a joke.
She smiled mysteriously and shrugged, without looking up at him. “Maybe.”
After a short while they stepped into a stairwell that echoed hollowly with their movement and voices. 2 and 3 leaned over its blistered metal rail to peek below. A basement level? There were no lights on down there, so they might as well have been gazing into an infinite abyss. Standing very close to 3, 2 made an exaggerated show of sniffing at the air and said, “We’re all using the same bars of soap and the same laundry detergent… so how is it that you smell better than everyone else?”
3 shrugged again. “Some people just have a natural good odor.”
“I’ve read that odor plays a big part in people’s attraction to each other, on a subliminal level.”
“But some people just have a bad odor, too. Like 4. Have you ever smelled him up close?”
“No. Have you ever smelled him up close?”
3 smiled at him, and bumped him with her elbow. “Are you jealous?”
“Maybe.”
“No, I don’t have to get close to him… his odor is strong enough. But I think it’s because he’s always jogging through the buildings.”
2 took her arm and pulled her back away from the railing. “Come on, let’s not lean on that too much; you never know if it’ll give way and you and me will take a nosedive.” He didn’t let go of her arm, however, and she turned to face him, raising her full dark eyebrows inquisitively. 2’s words stumbled over each other’s feet. “Hey look… I know you don’t want to tell me your name or where you live or anything because of the test, but after this I really want to see you again. I mean, see you seriously. You said you’re divorced, and I told you I’m divorced, and I don’t care at all that you have a child already, so long as you don’t care that I have one. I know you don’t want to hear my particulars either, but I’ll tell you this much: I have a good job. I can take care of you and your kid.”
3 smiled. “The mafia pays well, huh?”
“Sure does.”
“If you have a good job, why are you free to do this experiment? You must need the money.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you. I’m a school teacher. And it’s summer.”
“School teacher? Wow. I was wrong about you. And that’s a good job?”
“Well…”
“It’s so early to talk like this, don’t you think? It hasn’t even been a week.”
“I don’t want to wait for somebody else to scoop you up.” Again, he made it sound like a joke, but his words were actually very straightforward.
“Who’s going to scoop me up? Someone in here?”
“Here, there, or anywhere.”
“But you don’t really know me.”
“I know in my guts that I know enough.”
“Maybe I don’t know enough.”
“Okay. So after this is over, give me a chance and you can get to know me.”
She slipped out of his hand, but was still smiling. “We’ll see.” She gestured toward another flight of cement stairs that proceeded through the ceiling to a second floor. “Come on… let’s go see what’s up there.”
2 agreed. For now he had to be content with the fact that she still desired his company, and was willing to continue in their directionless journey together.
“You okay?” 4 asked 5, outside the closed door of the confession room.
5 turned to face him. Her eyes had been shut, and she still held a hand pressed to her brow. “What?” she asked in a slurred, disoriented voice.
“Do you have a headache?”
“Um… I feel kind of nauseous, actually. I almost passed out for a second there, I think.”
“You all right now? Maybe you’d better sit down.”
“Yeah. I was going to do some more exploring today, but think I’d better go lie down a little more. I didn’t really sleep well last night. Crazy dreams, or whatever.”
“I think you should.” 4 motioned toward the closed door. “You waiting for someone?”
5 regarded the door, blinking in bewilderment. “Um. I, ah… I don’t think so. No.”
“Do you need to make your confession?”
“No, I already did.” 5 stepped to one side. “Be my guest.”
“Go lie down, will ya?”
“I will.”
4 rapped on the door, waited a few ticks, then rapped again. “Hello?” He turned the knob, opened the door. The confessional was empty. He slipped inside and shut the door after him.
5 lingered for a few moments, staring at the door, then turned away to seek out her sleeping bag in the women’s makeshift dormitory.
“There they are.” 10 moved forward to the scarred old wooden work table, where a varied mix of doll heads in two rows had been assembled to confront each other. 9 hung back a bit, as if the sight of them were too disturbing. 10 examined them more closely, and reported, “Yep — eight of them, just like 5 said.”
“Eight?” 9’s tone was puzzled.
10 looked over his shoulder at her. “Yeah. Why?”
9 shook her head. “Nothing. So… okay, eight doll heads. Must have been kids messing around in here, like 8 said.”
“Perhaps.” 10 lifted each doll head in turn, peering into its hollow skull through its open neck stump. “Nothing hidden inside. Rats… I thought there might be a clue or something. A key to open a locked section of the complex, or a key to get outside. I thought maybe they were challenging our puzzle-solving abilities. That would be more fun, wouldn’t it?”
“We’re not inside a video game.”
10 peeked into the final doll head, its scalp just a pink hemisphere perforated with holes, and one blue eye missing. “Lobotomy complete,” he remarked as he set it back down. “Come on, let’s go find that graffiti they were talking about.”
“Why?”
“It’s just funny, that’s all. You have something better to do? You can always go back to camp on your own, if you want.” He smirked.
“On my own? Thanks a lot. I’ll come with you.”
“I’m nothing too out of the ordinary,” 4 said, in between biting his nails and spitting little shreds of them onto the floor of the closet-like room that served as the confessional. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad for your study. I guess if there was one unusual thing to define me, it would be…” He stopped short. Spit out a crescent sliver of nail, slick with his saliva. It looked to him like it got stuck on the glossy, graffiti-coated wall. “It would be that I was molested by a priest when I was eleven. Good old Father Ryan. He’s dead now — may he burn in Hell. Yeah… that’s sad, huh, if that’s the most outstanding thing that’s ever happened in my life?
“Well, I guess I’m not even really out of the ordinary in that sense, either. It’s not like a lot of boys haven’t been molested that way. I was reading about one fucker in Wisconsin who molested two hundred deaf boys. Nice, huh? Who knows what issues they might have had to deal with, since. Not bad enough being deaf, right? But I guess we’re all scarred in some way. Fractured and incomplete.