Page 19 of Juniper Unraveling

I offer an uncertain nod and clear my throat. “Doctor, some of the words you described … I’m not sure I can spell them right.”

“Do your best,” he says, walking past me toward a barrel set in the corner of the room. There, he discards his suit and mask, pressing a button that makes a suction sound, before exiting. And like a tornado has swept through the room, I’m left in the aftermath of mutilation.

I stare down at the man, whose eyes are closed. The dead man. One I watched the doctor inject and cut apart.

Swallowing back the urge to upchuck, I stand up from the table and make my way to the bed. With shaky hands, I grip the bars above the patient’s now-empty skull and push him toward the silver doors, as instructed. Within seconds of pressing the button, the doors open, and I haul the bed inside. The box closes in around me, and when the doors shut, sealing me in, a moment of panic steals my breath. I lurch toward the door and pound on the silver panels, but they don’t budge.

“Doctor Falkenrath! Doctor Falkenrath!” The air inside the box thickens, invading my chest with a suffocating fear.

Beside the door is a series of buttons, one labeled M as he said. I press it, and the box jerks, knocking me back into the wall. Hands plastered to the panels at either side of me, I crouch low, my stomach sinking to my knees, until the box finally slows to a stop and the doors open.

Rising slowly, I peer through the opening at the beds propped against the wall. The line extends down the hallway, and I step outside of the silver box to see that it ends before a large door, with big red letters that read INCINERATOR.

Large blue barrels sit in a row beside the door. They’re too far away to read what they hold, but the oversized skull and crossbones, alongside what I’ve come to learn as a biohazard symbol, across the front of each one tells me to stay away.

The sound of grinding gears startles me enough to spin around, and I gasp to see the silver doors have closed. With a frantic push of the button on the wall, they open again, to the man still lying on the bed. I wheel him out and park him beside the others. On the cart in front of his lies a large mound covered in a white sheet. I peel it back, to the mangled face of a boy not much older than me.

My stomach lurches at the sight of him.

His skin is dirty, but shows no signs of sores. Bones protrude from his skin, telling me he starved. A gash across his forehead spills flesh from inside the wound, and I tug the sheet back over him, breathing deeply. I do the same to the man I wheeled down, offering a small bit of dignity.

A thunderous boom echoes from up ahead, jerking my muscles.

The doors at the end of the hall open to two men dressed in dirty white aprons that carry red splotches of what I guess is blood. One holds the door open, as the other wheels in the cart at the front of the line, before they return for the next. The door holder waves at me, but I don’t wave back. I can’t. Behind him are enormous iron fixtures that flicker orange. My attention flits from the room with the huge oven-like structures, to the boy lying on the bed, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

The smell when we arrived.

Ovens.

Smoke.

Burning flesh.

The darker haired one steps around the line of carts, hobbling toward me.

I stumble into a cart behind me, and twist to shuffle back toward the silver doors. Finger hammering the button, I will myself not to panic, but the doors don’t open. Oh, God. I don’t want be stuck down here. I don’t want to talk to these devils. Demons who burn the bodies of innocent people.

I push it again. And again. A half dozen times, until it lights up and the silver doors open. When the man reaches me, I tumble into the box and straighten to a stand, pressing myself flat against the wall.

His face is scarred, and a stretch of skin on his cheek is all puffy and shiny, like a patch has been sewn there.

“Everything all right?” His muffled voice carries a rasp, like a smoker’s.

I nod, watching him through the narrowing crack of the door, until he finally disappears. It’s then that the anxiety washes over me, and I crumple to the floor to cry.

* * *

An agonized scream echoes down the hallway, tearing me from the drowsy fall into sleep. There’s an animalistic quality to the sound that carries the unmistakable pitch of true human suffering. My eyes scan the vast darkness that surrounds me, and when I close and open them again, there is no distinction, aside from the flapping of my lashes against the tops of my cheekbones.

Pitch blackness is a frightening thing to begin, but here, it’s worse. A nightmare that doesn’t cease when the eyes are open.

The room I’ve been given is a box with no windows. At night, all of the electricity shuts down in this place, and we’re left adrift in this void. My father once told me that space was a vacuous darkness, silent and cold and devoid of life. At the time, I remember thinking how frightening and lonely such a thing would be.

Yet, here I am.

A second scream joins the first, and I cover my ears, tucking my head closer to my body, as I lay upon the cot. The tremble in my breaths is louder this way, and I focus on the pace of every inhalation, desperate not to think about my brother.

He’s always been afraid of the dark.