The Cage - Chapter Six

Maria awoke with a jolt around seven o’clock in the morning. There was loud talking out in the living quarters.

“What is all that? Looks like the lap of luxury compared to this place!”

“Look at all that room, and the food!”

Maria slowly stood up and walked out of the sleeping quarters.

“There’s someone out there! Hey! Who are you?”

She looked forward and stopped, feeling a heavy sense of anxiety rush through her body. All twelve eyes belonging to the members of Group 1 were staring at her. The thick glass that was once on the other side of the metal bars had disappeared. The stench of human waste started to wonder into the main living area.

“What’s going on?” a small Mexican woman yelped as she tried to shake the bars loose.

Maria stared at them.

“Hey you! You alive?” Harry yelled with obvious agitation.

“Umm, well…” she said, frozen. She was unprepared for this. What can I say to these people? she thought. She turned around and yelled. “Everyone wake up and get out here now!”

Noises of commotion came from the sleeping quarters, and all five of the others quickly came out, yawning and groggy. They all froze once they saw what had happened.

“There’s even more of them!” yelled Harry. “Who are you people?”

No one spoke.

“We heard that broad yell,” he continued, causing Maria to scowl at him. “Are the rest of you mute or something?”

Still no one spoke. Their mouths were all wide open, staring into the cage, too confused and too tired to form words.

“Hellooooo?” Harry said sarcastically.

“Ummmm… hi,” came the response. It was Alan. “We are Group 2 in Mr. Boss’ experiment, and—”

“Experiment? What experiment?”

“Well, it’s not much of an experiment anymore. But we were originally told to watch you guys and observe your behavior and—”

“So what are we, the mice in a maze? Oh never mind, can you get us out of here?”

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“Get something to cut through the metal, call the police, the fire department, do something, do anything, just get us out of here!”

“I don’t think we can,” Alan said somberly. “We’re trapped in here ourselves. No way out.”

“No way out?”

“We’ve looked everywhere. The door is locked and is too strong to be broken down. There aren’t any tools in here we could use to get out. We’re stuck.”

The members of Group 1 sat there in silence for a few moments.

“We’re the cage within a cage,” said a young man with a goatee. “Even if we got out of here, we’d still be stuck in there.”

“We’ll keep trying though,” Alan said. “Both to get you out of there and to get all of us out of here.”

“Of course, Jendy might not want you out of there,” Bishop said.

“What?” Jendy said nervously.

“That’s right. She didn’t want you to be let loose from there because she was scared of the smell.”

“I did not!”

“Oh don’t deny it!”

“Bishop, this is not the time,” Alan said.

“So she did say it,” yelled Harry. “What’s wrong with you? We’re trapped in here and all you can think about is a smell?”

“No, of course not,” Jendy said.

“Then why’d you say it?”

“I… I don’t know. I’m sorry,” she said, peering angrily at Bishop, who smiled sarcastically.

“Anyway,” Harry said. “You mentioned an experiment. We’re here because we entered Mr. Boss’ contest. The one who can stay in the longest wins a boatload of cash. Or those of us who are left after a month get to split all of it.”

“How much did he say?” asked Alan.

“One hundred eighty million dollars.”

“The same amount.”

“What same amount?”

“We were told that if we observed the six of you for a month and didn’t leave or disrupt the experiment, that we would split a hundred eighty million dollars. He then led us down here. Everything seemed normal at first, but then we stopped having contact with Mr. Boss, and the doors were closed and locked. We’re not really sure why this is happening.”

Everyone sat there somberly for several moments.

“Well,” said an elderly woman in the cage, “what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” said Alan, peering at the bars of the cage. “These bars are thick and go deep into both the ceiling and the floor. I don’t think we can knock them out.”

Trays were pushed through the holes in the wall; six trays inside the cage and six trays outside. On each tray was bowl of grits and a half-pint box of milk.

“Breakfast this morning?” the young man inside the cage said. “Looks…. great.”

For several minutes, there was silence as the twelve of them ate their breakfast.

“That was… gross,” Jendy said. “Why are they feeding us this crap?”

“Everything’s changed,” Alan said. “Why should our food stay the same?”

“Well, I’m sure it’s laced with some crazy drugs or something,” George said. “You know, something to mess with our minds, and change the way we think or act.”

“Not everything’s a conspiracy, George,” Alan said.

George smiled and shook his head. “And not everything isn’t one, Alan.”

“I’m just saying that we can’t assume that everything is the fault of our deceiving government. Not everything is a fabrication of—”

“Better to look into the darkness where a murderer is not hiding than to skip the darkness where he is hiding.”

“Can never be too careful, right?”

“Exactly. You’re just too trusting.”

“Trust in the Lord, and everything will be—”

“Oh don’t give me that bull crap, preacher,” George blurted, causing Bishop to laugh.

At that moment, a whimpering sound could be heard from the cage. It was the young man, and he was crying into his empty grits bowl.

“Seth?” said the short Mexican woman in the cage. “Are you okay?”

“No I’m not!” he blurted amid his tears. “Everything is ruined!” He stood up and kicked the wall, then put his hands around two of the bars and tried to rip them out of ceiling and the floor, to no avail.

“Everything was perfect! Everything was going to be fine! I’m getting married in a month, and my fiancée is three months pregnant. We were going to have the most wonderful honeymoon ever, and then we were going to live as the happiest married couple in the world! Now it’s all gone to hell, and I probably won’t ever see her again!”

Maria’s heart churned sorrow for the young man, and she so wanted to comfort him. She stood up and walked to the bars, putting her arms through them and around Seth’s medium-sized frame, giving him a small hug. She knew the hopelessness he felt, for that same feeling was in her heart. She peered up at the face of Seth, and whispered, “We’ll get through this, together, all of us, it will—”

Seth suddenly jerked his hands forward, through the bars of the cage and around Maria’s neck, pulling tightly and masking her scream. She gasped for air and pleaded to be let go, but he just held tighter. His hands were on either side of her face. Harry yelled from behind, “Let her go!”

“Don’t move! I can snap her neck in one motion, so don’t move unless you want this woman to die!”

“Why are you doing this?” Maria managed to ask amid her gasps.

“Mr. Boss! I know you can hear me! Let us go or this woman dies!”

No response.

“Seth, let go of—”

“Shut up! Everyone shut up! Mr. Boss, you don’t want a dead body down here do you? Talk to me!”

The speakers crackled, and Mr. Boss’ voice was heard.

“Seth, my dear boy, what do you think you’re doing? You know, if you I let you out, that you’d then be thrown in jail for assault.”

“I’d take that to this any day!”

“I see. Look at the screen, will you?”

The TV, which could be seen from inside the cage, flicked on, emitting a blurry black-and-white image. The screen showed the corner of an empty room. Nothing changed for close to ten seconds. A small yet obviously pregnant woman fell into view, as if she had been pushed. She curled up in the fetal position, whimpering and crying. A man wearing a black mask and carrying a pistol walked into view, pointing the gun at the woman’s head, before glancing up at the camera and cocking the gun. Seth’s eyes widened.

“That’s my fiancée! Let her go!”

“Listen to me, Seth,” said Mr. Boss. “If you kill Maria, then your fiancée dies, simple as that. So if you ever want a chance to see her again, besides in a casket, I suggest that you let Ms. Goldsmith go and return to your seat.”

Seth closed his eyes and cried, before slowly loosening his grip on Maria’s neck. He slinked back into a corner and stared at the wall.

The next few hours were quite silent. No conversations lasted longer than a minute. Everyone just wanted to go off on their own and think about the situation they were in. Maria sat with her back against a wall, holding her neck, which still ached and was red.

“Ahem,” came a voice from the other side of the room. The voice belonged to Mr. Boss.

“Good morning,” he said, his scruffy old voice coming through the speakers. He sat in the observation room behind the large glass window.

“How is everyone today?”

“How do you think?” snapped Bishop. “Trapped in here like criminals, with our families used as bait. If I ever get my hands on you I’ll—”

“Bishop, I don’t know if he can hear you,” said Alan. Mr. Boss made no response to either of these statements, so they all assumed that Alan was right. Bishop ran up to the thick pane of glass and slammed his large body against it, but it didn’t budge. He bounced off the window and fell onto the floor. Mr. Boss seemed not to notice.

“Ouch,” Bishop said painfully. “Doesn’t look like we’re getting through there.”

Mr. Boss pulled out a notebook and cleared his throat, then started to read.

“Twelve blind mice, twelve blind mice, see how they run, see how they run, they all think they’re trapped down in this little cage, who knew there was hidden a way to escape, did you ever see there’s a door and a way, oh twelve blind mice?”