The museum lobby was choked with thick clouds of conversation, chatter reverberating off polished marble walls. And there were fluted columns, fat as aqueduct pipes, towering until they reached the parabolic arcs of renaissance ceiling paintings; thick illusions of naked bodies floating amongst the softest pastels of sky. These pictorials erased the heavy mass from the roof, and believed you to be under the sheltering skin of the silenced atmosphere.

 Alek could not look more clumsy as his possessions were tangled in such a disarray that the security men at the bag-check lost interest in their search and shoved him aside. A few paces behind, Alena brought only the clothes she was wearing and a small clock banded around her wrist.

 Before them were the avenues of the collected histories to the artifacts of dead cultures. Mythical figures frozen in stone, the portraits of propagandized cowards brazen with swords leased to their belts, and the emotional sensibilities only to be found on the pastures of an England without machines and without motors. The grand physical catalog of these people's evidence stood upon podiums, behind reflectionless glass, or squeezed impeccably into the joined corners of wooden frames. If all was lost, these were the things to be remembered, this is what we were. But if this was lost, the earth would appear as to merely have been lived on, humans grazing the terrain like animals, a culture of accumulation and production void of meaning, participating only towards the growth of nothingness. Not a nothingness of intention, but one of accident, a sorrowful and insulting excuse to be born atop the crust of a planet. Rather this exposition which Alek and Alena were soon to visit was of a human production enticing the liberation of our seduction, a love madly woven between the senses and the provoking objects, between the sight of curiosity and the representation. These artifacts were that of excellence disguised as a social contract, a historic documentation embedded with the subversive accounts of a moral founding, or simply an isolated reflection to a cachet hidden in time. All sheltered under this classically-proportioned mammoth structure, to be the taxonomy of genus, the taxonomy of the humble zeitgeist which only could be understood decades past its event. Alek and Alena were in the midst of a lost world's exhibition, one which was ceased to know of itself even existing. They were here together to view the dead's belief in there own importance.

“Great Globs these objects are all junk!” Alek shouted loud enough that women in fur coats next to him snickered with disgust.

“Then why did we come here Alek?” Replied Alena, her eyes exhausted by the emotional fatigue of disagreement.

“Of what importance are these things to us? Who decides for this exposure, surely not those who have created them.”

“When you make such harsh statements, it kills my desires, vacuums my heart.”

“The heart is an organ. It has no metaphoric qualities other than rushing blood through tiny tubes, unseen beneath our skin.”

“Well your's may be a suction, but I consider mine more, I have feelings for these objects. They bring me to other times, they freeze time, squeeze images of working hands into my mind.”

“Alena, all this jabber has made me ignore the real dilemma challenging itself inside my bladder, if you would excuse me.” Quickly he broke away without uttering a word.

“Alek wait that is! . . . “ but before she could finish, Alek had already raced through the doors, “It’s the C.E.S room, Center for . . Emancipated Seduction. Oh dear Alek you'll never come out,” she cried.

  A man dressed in a white lab suit, topped with a slicked patch of balding hair and glasses so large that they were almost clown-like, came forward sooner then Alek could even conceive of where he was. Immediately he let his arms swing into a benevolent clap onto Alek's shoulders and said, “Oh thank science! We have been waiting for nearly a half hour. Everyone, this is our 2:30 volunteer! We are very appreciative my young man. It is not so often that people will give themselves up for this kind of work, especially with the economy in the state that it is in. But quite vital you are and those eyes of yours, beading with vitality! Welcome my new friend to C.E.S. You will be satisfied to know that we have plenty of options to study upon you. When you are done here, there will be nothing which you don't know of what excites or dissuades you of pleasure.”

“Sir, as beautiful as this experiment sounds, I have a girlfriend out there waiting for me. I am a lonely man, and I don't do well in a room of strangers, I need my comforts of familiarity. So I will turn around, but thank you for your consideration.” Before Alek could reach for the door handle, a full-face helmet was thrown upon his head and he was left gazing through its arced shield of glass. Alek tried desperately to tear it off of his head but it was too tight and he couldn't get it past his ears, hopelessly letting it thud back onto his head. Instantly, Alek's arms were forcefully swung by a few skinny men in lab suits and his hands were molded around the rungs of a ladder. The man who greeted him had his back pressing Alek up the ladder, and impulsively, Alek started climbing. Another man raced up  and with ferocity, robed Alek with a full body oxygen suit before he could even resist in protest. Alek could see no other option than to continue climbing the ladder. When he reached the last rung, he was greeted by three other people similarly wrapped in oxygen suits. Through the reflection of their orbed helmets he could make out just how ridiculous he looked. Embarrassed as he was, Alek turned to climb back down the ladder, but there had already been someone climbing up and he had no other choice but to stay on the platform.  

 Unlike Alek, the three men next to him appeared to be pleased with their participation, and couldn't be more eager to pull themselves down into the water tank. One of the men in the oxygen suits had turned towards Alek. His skin was dry and the red hairs of a premature beard were pecking their way out of his chin.

“Good to see you.  My name is Juan Balado, Maurice Jenkins.” He reached out his hand, but quickly lost his attention to a noise under the water and brought his hand back to his side.

“Pardon, I couldn't quite hear you with all this bubbling, Is it Juan or Maurice.”

“Oh no worries to both of us. Its Juan. Hello my name is Maurice Jenkins.”

“Listen to me sir. I am not here to be puzzled into madness by some mindless inventor of personalities. Give me an answer that is straight, either you are Juan or Maurice, neither will cause me any nightmares, and then I can look into your eyes and say hello Juan, or Maurice, it is nice to meet you.”

“Let me tell you my name. My name is . . .Well names aren't any matter of importance but its Maurice. Juan Balado before your eyes, no happier he could be to meet you. I'll tell you that people won't give it a rest to label me a schizophrenic, Oh he is this way, claims to be two people simultaneously, thinks there is a fictitious world overlapping with the real one, cannot comprehend the situations of this real life creeping into his fictitious one. Well I have lost sense with this real life, he tells me, and they tell me, ceaselessly with that sorry pity hanging their eyes into a slump. But rather my world is pressed so very closely into the instantaneousness of things, now, like this, snap. I am overexposed and oversupplied with the transparency of this world. I cannot conceive of the limits you hear me. There are no mirrors braced to the edges. I am haunted by my pure and inescapable absorption!”

“Juan Maurice, I am not going to grieve or give praise to your condition, whatever it could be. Just tell me what we are all doing here. As much as I would give away my freedom to be stuffed into an oxygen suit, as you might have notice has already happen, in the least I would be respected if I were told what am I to do in such a cumbersome costume!”

“Shhhh. Would you quiet your voice. Maurice is very sensitive to loudness. We jump in the tank and dance with the dummy,” he whispered. “Lab coats test us, eyeball our movements. Nobody knows what is going to happen in the tank. I've seen men jump in and want to get right out. But they can't, have to dance with the dummy of course.” He gave a reassuring nod similar to that of a therapist comforting their patient.

“I am not jumping in the tank!” Alek shouted

“You have to jump into the tank.” Juan Maurice held a silencing finger up to Alek's lips while innocently searching around to see if any attention was drawn.

“What authority do any of you have over me. I didn't consent to this nonsense.”

“Okay Karl, you grab my hands. They are soft, I wash them a lot, many times a day. And we jump together.”

“My name is not Karl. From where do you create these characters?”

“Don't get salty with me. It says right there on your suit.”

“This isn't my suit! Alek yelled, shaking his head and closing his eyes. “All right, I'm jumping.” Alek grabbed Juan Maurice's hand, and it was undoubtedly soft, and together they leaped into the water.  

 The water was more like a clear pudding sludge than any manageable liquid he had ever dipped into before. And as he fell slowly to the bottom of the tank, the dummy had tilted its weight towards him. It was heavy and Alek fell back with it. Juan Maurice immediately wrapped his arms around the dummy. The hollow cylinder of metal slipped from his hug and fell onto Alek's legs. Alek could feel his bones bend as they were about to break before Juan Maurice rushed to his side and propped the dummy towards its vertical balance. Alek tried to scream but knew the noise would only serve to fill the air in his helmet. Nothing could be heard in the sludge. Alek saw Juan Maurice hopping clumsily around the dummy, keeping it balanced while knocking it like kid trying to break a bird away from its tree habitat. But the dummy was nothing but a nuisance, for it could only keep itself up if it was held by those who couldn't even properly hold it. Alek attempted to leap out from the sludge but the denseness gave his strength only the slow gestures of movement, nothing powerful enough to gain any height. Once again he sighted Juan Maurice struggling with the weight of the dummy and knew if he didn't lend his assistance it would surely topple upon him. Alek made slow strides towards the dummy but then suddenly something had given a great tug from his back. Alek tried to twist his neck back to see what it was, but his helmet didn't permit. It was a large hook, and within seconds Alek was yanked out of the water and thrown into a crowd of lab coats whom rapidly tore his helmet and oxygen suit off of him.

 “What in hell is all this. I demand you to get me the damned globs out of here!” Alek screamed.

“Oh don't you get so red,” replied a tough looking clean academic with perfectly circular spectacles. “We are all here to congratulate you, your sensitivity for the misfortune of another has deemed you in excellent accordance with our calculations.”

“Damn your calculations, I'm not a lab insect.”

“You must be joking to think that we can't discern the difference between insects and our volunteers.”

“Well volunteer is something that absolutely I am not! If you are even curious I did not come to this museum to be pulled out of a vat like a fish by this mad experiment of yours.” Alek cried, lying on his back while the lab suits were staring into his eyes in a way which scientists observe chemical changes in test tubes. “I am not going to fool around any longer!” Alek shouted, “I have completed your little test, although I don't know exactly what it is that I have completed, and now I'm going to demand that you lead me to the door.”

“Oh don't be so silly mr. . .”

“It's Alek, and don't jot that down because I am leaving, I wish no trace of my presence.”

“Mr. Alek, The test that you have just completed is preliminary, none of the other test will be as physical or even demand much out of you.  By testimony of our previous volunteers, the next tests have been agreed to give warming pleasure. No one has left here without the glory of their own satisfaction.”

“Well there won't be any more tests, The door please!”

“I think you are making a great mistake Mr. Alek.”

“I don't think you understand sir. . .”

“Dr. Mieloski.”

“Dr. Mieloski, I really wouldn't. . . Well maybe if the next test are known to give pleasure I could just give them a chance. But at any moment if I feel the slightest discomfort I will leave that second, agreed?”

“Agreed.” Dr. Mieloski smiled back, and continued, “Now these next experiments are more active in the areas of thoughts and perceptions. We are trying to tear down certain boundaries that have been impregnated unconsciously by cultural phenomenon. Do you see the triplets over there?”

 “Yes I see, they look ridiculous.”

The triplets were three women in there ending ages of their twenties. Very beautiful they were with long dark hair, slender bodies, and light silk dresses draped over their curves. There was a nylon rope tied to an apparatus clamped around one ankle. The rope reached across to the other side of the room, swung around a metal pulley, and stretched to latch onto the other ankle. As Alek could see, the three young women were performing awkward marching movements while together but separately holding hollowed-out boxes to their faces. They took turns murmuring phrases and longer passages of words into the boxes. Their voices were sweet but Alek couldn't make out any of the words.

“What are they saying?” he asked eagerly.

“Secrets.” the doctor quickly jabbed back. “These three women know each other very well. Their words are inaudible to us because we have agreed to the confidence of their secrets to be only between them. Each one is to convey an episode from their memory which has been restrained from being shared to the other. One after another they have volunteered to speak of such things, but they must resist from reacting, and are asked only conjure up more secrets while shifting their legs with movements. You see, women can overexert their emotions, unless their mind is carried elsewhere into their physical actions.”

“Don't you think this is rather cruel?”

“In the end they will wipe each other clean of all guilt. Cruelty is the least of our ambitions here.  You see the secret is the heart of seduction. Once it is cracked it can no longer return. It is the surface of what is imperceptible and unthinkable. For every new being or object, which you have not witnessed the elements of its makings or its past, there lies a secret. For some, its exposure could be the most difficult to accept. But this in itself is what we are striving for. Our greatest desire is the crack the secret of what we could last imagine, of what we would find impossible to renown as the truth.”

Dr. Mieloski then dragged Alek across the set of taut ropes tied to the women's ankles, and leaded his eyes towards two other younger girls, sisters Alek believed, who were lightly rolling hand sized balls into assorted slots. Without speaking, they would toss the small wooden balls together with a joined ease towards the agreement of their destination, ceaselessly following them with accomplished accuracy, together as if one hand had guided them.

“Here we are my friend, This is what we call the Vormask. Please take a seat.” Dr. Mieloski tilted his arm down to a tall black acrylic stool, where Alek then climbed to a sitting upright posture.  Then an unusually thick cloud of wool cloth was dropped atop Alek's head, falling across his vision. Instantly he was alarmed into a small fit of paranoia which only slowly eased itself away.  All sound was blanketed as he was left into the darkness of silence.  So dark it was that even his imagination appeared in black shadowing forms. But then suddenly a screen shuttered on, and a snip of static glazed across field of pixels, opening up a moving video. It was Alena, her neck tilted up as she was reaching to eye the survey camera.

“Finally I get you, I have been standing out here for nearly an hour trying to get this intercom to turn on.”

“Alena, they hooked me up here with all these experiments. Right now I'm covered in this slime and I don't quite understand it all. But the doctor's words are so convincing, makes me believe I'm contributing to at least something of importance.”

“That sounds wonderful Alek, you must be learning a lot.”

“Mainly discomfort and my own lack of tolerance for these things is what I'm learning. To be honest I haven't gain any enlightened thoughts.

“It's often good to question your discomforts. I've always found you to be a little impatient with other people's impositions.”

“I suppose your right, but these processes just make me feel alien to my emotions.”

“Sometimes emotions spur from a lack of tolerance.”

 “Tolerance? It is one thing if I was sincerely eager to contribute, but here I feel my time is being stolen by some higher aggression masked with a charming smile.”

“Oh Alek, quit with your wines. It really can't be so bad.”

“Alena, You don't know what is going on here. There are hundreds of people hooked up to these abstruse apparatus'. Every one appears so content, but I really think that they a merely degenerating their thoughts, an act counter-intuitive to anything the bodies nature could desire.”

“Is that what you desire?” Sincere concern was marked on the image of her face.

“Desire. That's what all these experiments are supposed to be about, so states Dr. Mieloski. But I really think that these lab coats are laughing silently as we overextend outside the substance which we believe is rightly the property of our own bodies. In their own esoteric art of removal it is our solicitude which is being neglected.”

“Finally I get you, I have been standing out here for nearly an hour trying to get this intercom to turn on.”

“I know, it is actually comforting to speak with someone who could understand.”

“That sounds wonderful Alek, you must be learning a lot.”

“Alena, please don't be sarcastic, not now.”

“It's often good to question your discomforts, I always found you to be a little impatient with someone else's impositions.

“Alena, you're making me mad. Enough on my impatience.”

“Sometimes emotions spur from a lack of tolerance.

 “What did you say?” Alek clenched his teeth with savage confusion, “Damned loop! You take me for some gullible coward!” Alek tore the simulation mask from his face and threw it against the wall, cracking the screen into splinters of glass while he gutted the wires out of its console. He then raced out of his suffocating room and maniacally kicked at the wooden balls scattered across the floor. The sisters who had been tossing them were stunned. But Alek could give little care, for had already lost himself away from them, and began escaping over the large vat of water. As he reached the other side, his madness came to its highest form when he found the door locked and incapable of opening. He saw a pipe leaning against a wall next to the ladder, grabbed at it and then angrily swung it into the door handle. The handle split apart and a chunk of the door broke off with it.  On the other side of the broken door there stood Alena, waiting. Her irises were a blue tessellating orb of sharp crystals, illuminated by the penetrating landscape of light, and sworn in by the testimony of an unabridged sympathy, pure in its cone of loyalty and solace. She was nothing like the video, the hue of her skin was warmer. She was not ready to speak, but for Alek, she had already spoken, through the clear utterances which were captured into the subtle tinges of her face muscles. Alena knew that in times like these it becomes ever the more pressing to voice oneself when the content of words have lost their meaning and are drained of their utility. As much as the body reaches for words it cannot upsurge any and thus it must rely on something more faithfully intuitive, beyond the use of meaning, beyond love.

 

 

The Lavatory | by Richie Israel