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Vo l .

I s s u e

Virginia Carraway Stark is editor in chief of StarkLight Press and

Director at the National Paranormal Society. She has written
extensively on the paranormal and injects her considerable
knowledge on the subject into her speculative fiction and
screenplays. You can find Virginia's work through StarkLight Press.
She works with other writers, artists and poets to hone her talents
and to offer encouragement and insight to others. She has been an
honorable mention at Canne Film Festival for her screenplay, Blind Eye and
was nominated for an Aurora Award.
www.starklightpress.com
www.ihavememory.wordpress.com
www.virginiastark.wordpress.com
Jenn Spaulding is a self-published author of two poetry books; Book of
Sorrows and The Broken
Ones, both as a Kindle version or as a trade paperback and can be purchased
on Amazon.com.
Ms. Estes has also been recognized by the Library of Congress for her mastery
of poetry and her poem Shattered is published in their edition the
International Whos Who in Poetry 2012. She is currently slaving over her first
fiction novel Insanity, look for it soon. She is earning her
Bachelors Degree in Forensic Psychology, with hopes of running her own crime lab one day.
She is also an honorary member of the elite National Society of Collegiate Scholars. Bravely,
she has chosen to be an advocate for Victims of Violence, so they no longer have to suffer in
silence. Please join her fight, check out her website; Victims of Violence
http://toddandjenn02.wix.com/sufferinginsilence. Contact her anytime she will answer any and
all questions; sweetjeni74@stu.argosy.edu. You can also follow her on Twitter, J.L. Estes
@sweetjeni74.
L,E, Caine is a staff writer for Starklight Press as well as an artist
in her own right. She started off her career in writing as a ghost
writer and later ventured into the world of science fiction and
fantasy with the occasional horrendous horror story that she claims
helps her to 'vent murderous urges'.
She is a frequent contributor both here and to various wiccan,
empath and magical bulletin boards.

William Norton is a roughneck and professional welder who

spends most of his time in the Great White North of Western
Canada. When not busy on the rig site, William writes chilling
speculative fiction and investigating the rumors, myths and
legends he hears in the shack. You can find his fiction in
StarkLight Press publications such as StarkLight Volume 2,
Hearts Asunder and Shamrocks, Saints and Standing Stones ,
available at www.starklightpress.com/starklight-press-bookstore/

Anthony Stark is a writer and editor with a background in

engineering, science and medicine. Growing up in the wilds of the
far north he had a lot of time to hone his skills both in research
and in communications. With a wealth of experiences and travel he
has a practical approach to writing and to life. He has taught
classes in art, first aid and tutored university students as has
polished his knack for explaining nearly any subject in a relatable
way. He has always been a writer, practicing as a youth on essays
'for fun' and moving on to writing technical manuals, articles, novels and short
stories. His array of talents is useful in nearly any field lends itself especially
to the diverse world of writing, to which he adds his own innate diverse
pragmatism.

June 5, 2016, a UFO is recorded looking like a white pyramid in Batvia IL.
The unedited eyewitness statement follows:
Unedited Witness Statement: i am sending this directly from my iphone, unedited. we just
took this video of a ufo. Me and two of my kids(17,20) were leaving chili's parking lot and i
begin to joke with them that it was a perfect evening to see an ufo. I believe in ufo but my kids
are totally sceptical about it. We jump in the car and I looked up and saw a light. I continue to
joke with them and said, "look there, a ufo....hahahaha".... but at the time it was only that, a
joke. We continued to watch it as it rapidly start to approach us. then the light started to dim
out and we could see a dark form over it. My son then started to literally freak out. That thing
came about 300 meters from us and it was a dark squared with rounded corners thing,
cruising the sky, no sound whatsoever!!!!!!! The video doesn't reflect even 10% of the clarity of
the sighting. unfortunately phone camaras are horrible, specially at dark. But it was so clear to
us. it seemed to be the size of a car just crusing there, with almost the same color of the
background. My son is still shacking. He never believed in anything paranormal. I am
available to give details if you need. tks.
There is no confirmation on this report and as 'unidentified' indicates, no knowledge if this
strange object is alien in origin. With increasing designs and manufacturing of drones it has

become harder and harder to differentiate between legitimate UFOs and drones that clutter
the skies.
Batvia is a suburb of Chicago which is known to have had mass UFO sightings in the past. In
2006 there was a mass sighting and video from multiple sources as well as accounts from
many witnesses all the way into Michigan.
Sources:
www.mufon.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyZhDFvJtMM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvKBGuDAW0I
www.ufosightingsdaily.com

By Leanne Caine
How do I channel aliens from the Pleiades?
I got this question in my in box and I kept bumping it from my 'to answer list' until I was
specifically ordered by the overlords who run Outermost to find something 'alien-y' for the two
themed alien editions of Outermost.

I hate questions about 'how do I channel blank' because the

way that you channel anything is by opening doors and
windows that, unless you know what you're doing, should
really stay closed. If you have to ask, you aren't ready.

I finally decided to tackle this question head one because there is some small magical
reasoning behind the idea of channeling aliens from the Pleiadess. The reason I say this is
because the Cherokee Native Americans believe themselves to be descended from beings
that came from the Pleiades star system so it isn't actually channeling aliens, not if you're a
Cherokee anyway. At that point it's about ancestor worship which makes a lot more sense.
I have a lot of whacked out friends and I remember when
I was first really embracing my magical side overhearing
all these conversations about, 'I channel these alien
beings from some star or other and they're totally
benevolent and like know everything we're doing wrong
as a race.

Even to a young 'seeker' this sounded like bull crap to

me. Where are these aliens' credentials? Any spirit can
come along and say it's from anywhere and boy is it easy
to have answers to all the problems of anywhere that you
don't physically live. Do you know the problem with New
Orleans after the Hurricane? Well, I dont' because I haven't been there after it but let me tell
you as an expert everything that you should do to fix it.

Some people call this being objective, I call it being full of shit.
This bugged me for a long time. I've even heard some people go so far as to say, I don't
worry about nuclear war (or pollution or whatever) because I know that aliens are watching
and they won't let it go so far that we hurt our beautiful planet..
Wow. Really? Because if I saw a bunch of jerks on a planet and
they were about to wreck the place I'd either kill all the people
or let them self destruct themselves and count the universe to
be a better, brighter place for it. So, why are these aliens letting
us paint ourselves into a corner and then planning on sweeping
in at the last minute to help humanity reach its potential- and I
think there should probably be something about the Age of
Aquarius in there too.
When I researched aliens the one overwhelming thing I found was that there are very few
people who channel them now. It seems that those people who did
so didn't find it a long-term solution. In fact, a lot of the web-sites I
looked at promised that after 2012 our beneficent alien overlords
would show us all how to be less self-centered and materialistic
and this would be the start of a truly wonderful time for humanity.
2012 came and went and the posts slowed down. Most of the web
pages stop posting by the end of 2013. The aliens that they'd been
channeling didn't seem to have hit anything on the head except
the idiot 'channeling' them. The world, in fact, was getting worse. Race wars didn't end, in fact
tensions got worse. Pollution got worse. Everything sucked a little more and none of the
rainbows and Pegasuses that were promised were delivered. After 2013 it's pretty damn hard
to find a web page that talks about demons as positive spirits. There is one major one and
they've actual made their special little alien guy a registered trademark. Benevolent aliens
want to be trademarked?
After 2013 it's hard to find a single place that regards aliens as good spirits, but if you type in
aliens and 'evil' or 'demon' you'll get a lot of hits. IF those people who said they were
channeling aliens actually were channeling, then the spirits they channeled were liars, failing
that the person was either lying or deluded. Anyway you look at it, it's an embarrassing
situation.
So before you start channeling anything from the anywhere system have a good peruse on
the article that questions if aliens are actually demons, because there are some good points
to that idea. Maybe not all of them, but there are a lot of holes in a lot of their stories. Where
do you come from? The Moon you say? Well, we've been there... didn't see your folks there?
You sure you're from the Moon?
Oh, you're actually from Mars? Guess what, we've had a pretty good look around there too...
what neighborhood are you from?
Oh, you meant to say you were from the Pleiades. True enough, I don't know any other folk

from The Pleiades and we haven't had a good look at them with probes or telescopes yet, I
guess that's possible...
Now the latest, now that we're starting to get closer to getting a look further and further into
the galaxy? They're all from convenient 'other dimensions'. Is that a fancy way of saying the
realm of spirits? What some may call purgatory or hell... wait a minute, I'm feeling like we've
been had! We had this conversation back a couple thousand years ago!
The stories keep changing and that's not a good sign. Neither is the fact that all the
channeling hasn't seemed to bring about even one of the promises these wondrous beings
have made.
To answer your question: Be really gullible and believe whatever any
spirit from another realm tells you. Do this and you'll be channeling from
the Pleiades before you can say, 'Open Doorway'.

What's Up With Dulce

by Virginia Carraway Stark
If you've noticed, there are several
references to Dulce in this issue of
Outermost. By now you might be
wondering why that is. So here's a
quick overview for you if you've
never heard about Dulce before or
if you need a quick reminder, or
maybe you'll learn something new
even if you thought you already
knew everything there is to know
about Dulce.

Dulce is the most famous of the and nefarious of the alleged government-alien bases. They
were first brought to the attention of the public in 1979-1980. A lot of people say that the
allegations of what go on in Dulce are the most outrageous and absurd of all the possible
allegations of government/alien conspiracies. This may be true, Dulce has allegedly had Delta
Force air fights with alien ships over Dulce, it is alleged to be the center for genetic testing,
human cloning and a vast array of other allegations that will be horrifying and probably
laughable to someone reading about them for the first time. The persistence of the rumors of
'what goes on' in Dulce
continue to surface as
more security and
military personnel speak
up. Does this make it
true? Unfortunately the
public know little to
nothing about the truth
about Dulce.
The American
Government claims that
the only grains of truth to
the Dulce mythos is that
there is a deactivated
cold-war era missile
silo/bunker in the area.

Since no one is allowed to see it we have a he says/they say situation. According to the
government the whole thing is made up and there isn't anything to see so I'm not going to say
anything more about their perspective as there isn't anything to say.
Instead I will tell you what the other 'they' say about Dulce. They say that aliens live under Mt.
Archuleta in New Mexico, USA. They say that it's the biggest alien underground base,
possibly in the world but certainly in America. They say that Reptilians and Gray Aliens work
with human doctors to do extensive testing on humans in particular hybridization, chip
implants for tracking, changing behavior through mind control and causing diseases if the
person dares to speak out. There are also more seemingly innocuous things like trying to
understand and read the human aura. This is allegedly a study of interest because these
aliens can see human auras much like how some animals can see UV light and they are
trying to understand humans better. Why? Because they want to take over the planet and
breed with our women until our differences are forgotten.
If you are interested in learning more about the
facts about the construction of Dulce, complete
with billing statements and pictures of enormous
transports bringing equipment and a labor force
designed to build much much much more than a
missile bunker, search for it on YouTube. There
are a lot of people who have done extensive
record searching and worked for years on this
area of study and most of what I have to tell you
is reiterating speculation from people who either
claim to have been held in Dulce or worked there or to direct you to people who seem to have
done their homework.
Dulce was the first of the major underground bases to be 'exposed' to the public but the
rumors don't stop with Dulce, it was just the first and apparently the largest. The rumors of
underground bases and interconnected tunnels connecting the bases as far north as Dawson
Creek, Canada (a city in Canada that was built by the U.S. Military to build a road to Alaska to
help defeat the Axis enemies) and as far south as San Diego. The system stretches from
ocean to ocean as well. It's a big claim and it sounds absurd. When people hear about aliens
coming to earth, we all want it to be like Star Trek and not like 'Space Invaders', nevertheless
the rumors will not die. The rumors are consistent with each other, each account seeming to
bear up on the other accounts. The common theme is that we are nothing to these invading
species. We are breeders. We are chattel. We are dinner.
The common theme of Dulce is all of our worst
nightmares of space invasion.
There is a lot of information on this subject.
The four-corners meeting of states that is near
Dulce has the highest missing persons rate in
the country. The people who go missing are
children (who are allegedly kept in cages and
then eaten), women of child-bearing age and
young, healthy men. All the stories are horrific

and all the people who allege to have worked in Dulce say the same things: There are
monsters down there, especially in Level Seven where the real experiments go on. The worst
ones.
Women are routinely impregnated and their fetuses removed at three months... at which time
they are genetically altered and usually given accelerated growth. The question repeats again
and again: Why would anyone do this?
All the answers are frightening and you will need to start delving into some deep waters to
find anything approaching an answer. The problem with discussing anything to do with aliens
is that humanity has a gut reaction to mock anything to do with aliens. Personally, it was this
reaction in myself that made me start to probe (pardon the pun) more deeply myself. Why
dismiss anything to do with life from other planets as ludicrous?

Over the decades it has become more and more feasible that there MUST be other life in our
galaxy. There are so many planets being discovered in 'the Goldilocks' zone of various stars,
why would intelligent life have only evolved on earth? It's not logical, it doesn't make sense to
think we are the only ones and to ridicule anyone who thinks differently. As our science
evolves we also see more and more how easy it would be to go from where we are now to
being able to treat the entire galaxy as our backyard.
This discounts the idea
that the 'aliens' have in
fact been on this planet
as long or much longer
than we have. That the
'aliens' were in fact the
dominant life form or
thousands of years.
There are as many
theories of what 'could
be' as any person can
speculate on with the
scattering of facts that
we have access to.
What can't be denied is
the blatant desire by
the 'They' in charge to
cover up for something.
I'm not asking you to believe in anything, what I am asking you to do is to think about things
before you mock or deride them. Do I believe in the rumors about Dulce? I don't know. Would
I want to go there and find out for myself? No, I'm too much of a coward for that and I think a
part of me believes that at least some of it is true.
What I'm asking you to do is to just open your heart, open your mind and don't be a cynic.
Don't be derisive, it isn't scientific and it won't lead you to a true conclusion. Do research on

the subjects for yourself and be brave enough to not laugh at what frightens you. The CIA
admits to coming up with the idea of coming up with a term to deride anyone who tried to talk
about something that they saw. The term they came up with was 'conspiracy theorists'. This
has become a scarlet letter that once applied to someone is no different than a warning sign
that says, Danger, Cray-Cray Ahead. To openly admit, to pridefully admit to coming up with
such a term and for people to still believe in it as a smear is a suspicious act all on its own.
Think of the CIA as a classic sociopath. One of the
basic methods a sociopath uses on their targets is to
convince everyone around them that their victims are
too crazy to be trusted. 'Don't listen, they're insane',
that's what all the workers report being told about the
people in cages. Being painted as crazy, anything
someone says or does is reacted to with scorn and
disdain or at best, pity. What a tried and true method
to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Lets not let
anyone tell us who is crazy or sane, let's figure it out
quietly, studiously and for ourselves. One we've done
that we can start to decide where to place our trust
and maybe one day this will lead to finding out 'What's
Up With Dulce'.

Thanks for thinking.

-VCS
Sources:
The Dulce Book By Branton
Anthony S. Sanchez (and Colonel X)

Extraterrestrial Beings May Walk Among Us: What Do You Believe?

By Jenn Spaulding

The available evidence strongly suggests that the origins of life should occur,
given the initial conditions and billions of years of evolutionary time-Carl Sagan

The universe is filled with infinite possibilities of intelligent life forms that surely exist on other
planets than Earth. To think that we are the only life forms that exist in the entire universe is
just plain ignorance. Maybe some people make themselves believe that aliens dont exist
because theyre scared or just dont want to face the fact how miniscule we humans are within
this cosmos. My friends, whom I rely on to help me in understanding the paranormal, do you
believe that aliens exist? Do you believe they have visited us, abducted us, and may now
actually walk among us? Remember what your answer was and well see if I can change your
mind about the existence of aliens and UFOs.
From 1947 to 1969 the United States Air Force began Project Blue Book at the
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Project Blue Books focus was to document, collect, and
explore reports of unidentified flying objects. Makes me wonder if there was an eight hundred
number hotline to call into. Recently all of these documents became declassified and are now
public record. There are extensive amounts of data pertaining to UFOs, which include two

cubic feet of administrative files, thirty-seven cubic feet of individual case files each recorded
separately, and three cubic feet of records in regards to the Office of Special Investigations or
OSI. Within these files are 12,618 sightings of unidentified flying objects of which 701 remain
unidentified. So why did this project suddenly cease to exist in 1969 when they were clearly
obtaining pertinent data and had cases that werent solved?
Since the closure of Project Blue Book there are no documented cases of unidentified flying
objects, yet the internet is smattered with pictures depicting flying space crafts. When the
project concluded an examination was conducted by the OSI of the data recovered and it was
found that; no unidentified flying object that has been reported, investigated, or evaluated has
ever been a threat to national security, there has been no evidence that shows that any of the
UFOs have advanced technology or are of alien origin, and that there was no Roswell, New
Mexico incident in 1947. This sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me. Isnt it funny that an
investigation on a government body that was being accused of a government cover-up was
done by the government? So of course everythings peachy keen and of course there was no
government cover up. Of course there were no extraterrestrial beings or any extraterrestrial
matter or material. Perhaps the 701 unidentified objects were dropping aliens off to live
among us, to breed with us, to cohabitate with us.

In 1974 Carl Sagan and his buddies decided to send an Arecibo message into outer space
via radio waves. Turns out it was the most powerful broadcast ever intentionally relayed into
space. This message was aimed at a mass of stars 25,000 light years away. This missive was
a pictorial depiction of a human face, a signal depiction of Earths location in the galaxy, key
elements of our math and science, and the antennae that NASA used to send the
transmission. All with high hopes that there was extraterrestrial intelligence out in the
universe. Not surprisingly in 2001, 27 years later, a massive crop circle appeared that was
nearly identical to the message that was sent in 1974. The message popped up in a field right
next to Britains largest telescope, Chilbolton. Below is the message that was sent by Carl
Sagan in 1974.

Below is an image of the message that appeared in the form of a crop circle in 2001.

Whether you believe that these images were made by aliens or humans, you have to admit
the likeness of the two photos is uncanny to say the least. This depiction looks identical to the
one that we transmitted to outer space, except that it shows a different solar system, a picture
of the alien sender, non-human DNA, and a microwave antenna rather than the radio wave
antennae we sent ours with. Of course many have written this phenomenon off as a hoax.
Personally I believe we sent a message and we received an answer back. Maybe it took so
long because these beings had tried to get their message across, but hadnt succeeded.
Maybe it took so long because thats how long it takes. Who knows?
I wonder if there was a reason that the message of with the face showed up three days before
the other rectangular pictorial image. When the Arecibo message was transmitted it was done
so in Binary form. Its not surprising to learn that in the National Security Agencies document
titled, Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages that there were a series of 29 messages from
outer space in Binary form. Since the dawn of time astronomers have searched for signs of
intelligent life other than humans in the universe and of course when we find them they are
covered up or written off as a hoax. What do you believe?
References: National Archives. (2016). Project Blue Book. Retrieved from:
http://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html
Collective Evolution. (2016). In 1974 Carl Sagan Sent This
Message into Space. Retrieved from:
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/06/09/in-1974-carl-sagan-sent-thi
s-message-into-space-in-2001-we-received-this-response/

Urban Legends: From Annunaki to Bohemian Grove, a brief overview

The Anunnaki from Nibiru

By: Jenn Spaulding
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we
can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.- Stephen Hawking

If we humans are a mere troop of monkeys capable of the feats weve conquered than
imagine what a lounge of man-like lizards are capable of. Do you believe they would be
capable of taking over Earth and making humans their slaves? Urban Legend and Conspiracy
Theorists are adamant that not only has earth been infested with alien presences in the past
but that we are being controlled by the ancient reptilian beings also known as the Annunaki.

Human history is riddled with tales of

the Anunnakis diabolical presence
and their involvement with humans.
Anunnaki is of Sumerian descent and
means, Those who from Heaven to
Earth came. The Anunnaki are a
man-like reptilian race hailing from
the planet Nibiru or as its better
known as Planet X. Astronomers
have determined that this planet has
a 3,600-year elliptical orbit that
settles it between Jupiter and Mars
then hurls it back out into outer

space. Depictions of this

reptilian race have
appeared in text since
the beginning of time. So
are the Anunnaki and
Planet X a big hoax, an
urban legend or does
this sinister race of
beings really exist?

Above is an image of
an alleged Anunnaki that
was uncovered by
archeologists.
According to author and
conspiracy theorist David
Icke the Anunnaki are
wickedly real. He even
goes so far as to state that for the past 450,000 years the Anunnaki have been ruling Earth in
different disguises and from different realms of existence. This is possible because the
Anunnaki have tampered with our genetic code in order to control the evolution of humans to
make us their personal lackeys. Icke even claims that the Anunnaki have forged genealogy to
command human beings for them. Im not shocked that these particular genetically
engineered families still rule the world today.
This would seem to hold the answers for why the elite on planet earth are obsessed with
bloodlines and lineage. It has generally been assumed that the interbreeding that took place
in aristocracy was due to haughtiness and airs and graces. A sort of Us versus the
Commoners perspective. Thats not the case though. The Anunnaki did this to maintain a
precise genetic schematic that allows them to maintain certain skills, like shape-shifting from
lizard to human form. However, that Anunnaki can take on any form they choose. Some of the
Anunnaki remain on Earth with the hybrids they created, while some of them control humans
via telepathy from the lower regions of the 4 th dimension. The Anunnaki have created an
illustrious secret society that gave them reign to take complete control of Earth.

The question is: Why would they bother with humans if theyre so advanced? This question
comes up repeatedly in arguments against the concept of these lower dimension reptilian
aliens. The answer is that the Anunnaki need earthlings: for dinner.

Nomnomnom, lets go out and get us some dins!

When one takes a look at vampires and the Anunnaki they find many similarities between the
two, such as; immortality, love of consuming blood, sex with victims, shape shifting,
hypnotism, and secret organizations. Albeit these 4 th dimensional reptiles wear the human
skin like a genetic coat and when a host dies the Anunnaki simply move unto the next
vulnerable prey. Its necessary for the Anunnaki to drink blood or else they wouldnt be able to
shift into human form. Not only that the Anunnaki thrive off of human fear, aggression, and
other negative feelings. This is said to be because theyre addicted to adrenalchrome which
we emit in situations of severe terror. The Anunnaki dont bite their victims, but symbolically
slice their throats from left to right and sip the blood from goblets. A sexual encounter with one
of this mangy reptiles would be a horrifying experience of violence, rape, murder, and satanic
ritual.

Human excretions from the brain in times of extreme fear or pain are allegedly the bread and butter
that the Annunaki come to our planet and dimension to feast on.

The sexual abuse doled out by the Anunnaki is used to blackmail and manipulate their
victims psyche. These vicious reptiles have an infinite network of victims they rape, abuse,
and ritualistically sacrifice. They even have numerous playgrounds that world leaders
congregate at, like Bohemian Grove.

Outermost Journal would like to specify that these are alleged members of the Bohemian Grove cult
members. Most of the activities at Bohemian Grove are rampant speculation and Outermost does not
claim to have evidence of any of said activities. This is reported as part of Urban Legend
Which is a 2,700-acre compound located just north of San Francisco. Believe it or not this
compound is a massive graveyard that holds numerous victims drained of their lifes blood
and their souls energies.

The maps of where to find Bohemian Grove and the

approximate layout based off of infiltrators and defectors who
have been slowly working to expose the cult and their nefarious
activities.
The ancient Sumerians described this planet as a winged
disc and thats how those that have recently seen this
planet describe it as well; a planet with wings.
Im assuming that Nibiru is now settled between Jupiter
and Mars as there have been reports of it being spotted in
the United States in November and December of 2015.
However now reports of it being spotted in the beginning
of May have emerged from Russia, Japan, and Peru.

Is it really possible that these

direful reptilian beings exist and are
right now turning us into slaves?
Or is it merely the oldest urban
legend in the book? Photos such
as this are all over the internet and
thanks to photoshop and digital
photography their efficacy is nearly
impossible to prove. Ill leave it for
you to decide.

References: LiBrizzi, M. (2016). The Anunnaki, the Vampire,

and the Structure of Dissent. Retrieved from:
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/Issues/034/librizzi.htm

Of Magnets and Mesas

An Excerpt from My Father's Story is My Story
by Tony Stark
Walk with me, Vincent.
I looked up from my drafting table at the voice in the doorway. The window to my left reflected
off the paper brightly enough to have blinded my vision, and the voice belonged to only a
silhouette for a moment or two. It resolved into the stalwart frame of Wendell Howell, director
of civillian operations at China Lake.
'Kay, I replied, stubbing out my cigarette into the bent coffee can I had been using for my
dog ends. Grabbing my jacket more for the smokes it had in its breast pocket than for
insulation, I shook Wendell's hand.
Wendell had hired me from Rome back in '56. He had been a younger engineer then, still
older than me, but one of the assistants for the American team who had come to do the final
survey of the aqueducts I had re-engineered. He and I had hit it off, as much as anyone could
with Wendell, anyway. He was a distracted, inward-turning man, who was prone to streaks of
oddity in his behaviour and gross changes of mood that made him at times awkward or
discomfiting to be around. People said they got aggravated by his tendency to contradict
himself from day to day, opinion to opinion. I had never really minded that sort of thingtended to look right through it- and judged Wendell on his ability as a geo-engineer and a
draghtsman. He excelled at both, and one of the places where he never grew disjointed was
around the blueprints, so I counted Wendell as a friend.
We walked at a quick clip down the wide, army base hallway, heels clicking in staccato rhythm
on the linoleum. Out the double, brass-handled doors with a pop and down the cement steps.
The heat of the Nevada desert, while formidable in the office, hit one like a wrought iron frying
pan between the eyes as soon as we were in the open. Thick and dry wind, loaded with
blowing sand, passed us by in sheets that seemed to move too slowly to be airborne. Some
of the dust was blowing up from from the recent bomb tests, I could tell by the way it made
every pore on my skin stand to attention. Some of it was blowing all the way from White
Sands, no doubt. I wondered why in hell Wendell would want to take a stroll around the
'campus', as we laughingly called it, on a hot-baked day like this.
What's up? I asked him, words muffling themselves around the cigarette I was trying to light
against the wind. With some difficulty, I got it going, and glanced over at Howell with some
small irritation. He still hadn't answered me.
Howell was lost in his own thoughts again, his face remarkably slack, his movements
automatic. We had made a beeline from the doors of the shack thus far, and I eyeballed our
destination. It was a covered army jeep with two M.Ps in it.
If this had been a more normal civilian-military operation, I would have become abruptly
concerned. M.Ps usually do that to civvies and soldiers alike. But the M.Ps on this base were
glorified child-minders and security guards: they did everything from bring us fresh water for
the coolers to, as in this case, drive us from point A to point B. Anything within the rather large

collection of engineering buildings, shops, offices and archives was still in point A, and I could
hop in a jeep and toodle around to any of them, or out to the main gate to go home to my
Lucia at night, if I wanted. But point B consisted of any of the four thousand or so hectares of
salt flat, desert ridges, secret airfields, missile silo bases and other outbuildings that made up
the China Lake facility. So I could therefore surmise that we were headed to one of these
point Bs by the idling, M.P-infested jeep.
You're doing it again, Wendell, I advised my companion. He blinked and his mouth twitched
as though I had pinched him, and his eyes cleared. They blinked away sand for the first time
in this long journey across the sand.
Oh, sorry, he muttered, wiping his now streaming eyes with a handkerchief. Lost in my-
-own thoughts, I nodded, smirking. I know. You wanted I should tell you, though.
Howell nodded vigorously, but his face was already becoming slack and distracted again.
Really preoccupied, I thought, frowning.
He opened up the flimsy door of the old war jeep and it flapped out of his hand, whipped
about by the angry wind. I dove into the relative shelter of the vehicle and Wendell followed
me hurriedly. He struggled with the door against the strength of the gust, and then we were
sealed into the vehicle with the M.Ps.
Hiya, Vincent, the M.P. In the passenger seat greeted me idly. Billy was a solid fella; we
would exchange a smoke of an evening and look out at the immensity of the night sky.
Sometimes a flask would be exchanged.
Hi, Billy, I rummaged in my pocket and tapped a smoke out of my pack. He took it, lit it with
his own lighter. He looked a little grim, less buoyant than he usually was. A brief shadow
flickered across my mind... am I in some kinda trouble? I wondered. But no, giving him a
mental poke with my mind, I could see it wasn't anything like that. He was still just fine taking
smokes I owed him, which a man in his position wouldn't really want to do in front of others if I
had been on the hot seat. It was just a kind of... supression. A bleakness, or a resigned,
quietly embattled air. Like Billy was being carted off for Christmas with the in-laws.
The driver kicked the old transmission into gear and we lurched off in second gear, picking up
speed in rocking fits and starts until we were a bolt across the flats. I took the rocky start's
distraction to catch a peek at the other M.P; he was a guy I hadn't ever seen before. He was
bigger than Billy by a fair bit, which made him positively massive by my shrimpy standards.
He was one of the deep base M.Ps, so called because they moved on from the main gate
deep inside the immense facility to posts unknown. They had a massive, brick wall quality
about them, with great huge necks like Iowa farm hands and tiny little eyes set deep into
thick, rather caricatured brows. They didn't ever talk much, laughed less, never seemed to
think about anything but their duty. I noticed for the first time that all those deep base M.Ps
had the same bleak resignation to them that I noticed had settled on Billy. The same sad
distance that was so distracting Wendell.
I felt no such opression, except those cues I was picking up from my three companions that
this was not a time for idle chatter or wisecracks. Usually when a group of us headed off

across the flats we would crack a joke or two, have a bit of fun. Flash Gordon would be
mentioned on many occasions. We were all just boys still, even those of us with wives and
kids, and we couldn't help but enjoy the fact we had a great big fast jeep and miles of space
to careen around inside. That was part of the fun of it out in the middle of goddamn nowhere;
you got to have a bit of fun.
Not so today, however. Their oppressive pensiveness had yielded a crawling, growing
apprehension that bordered on functional panic in the center of my spine. I was acutely aware
that this was not the world of point A I was toodling around in- we were under the power of the
driver now, and he was most definitely a point B kinda guy.
I could feel an almost audible pop as we left the world of China Lake that I had been inside
and entered the world of the deep base. It was a pop that I felt in my forehead, like a
membrane of sweet, boyish protectedness had stretched as far as it could and had just burst
from around my straining skull. The world around me into which I had entered seemed bleak
indeed, bleak and blue and empty. And horrible somehow, too, and I use that in the sense of
'full of horror'. I could see a darkness square in front of me, see it clearly as I could see the
mesa rising up as we approached. And from that darkness would spring monsters. Now that
the membrane of reality had popped and I was seeing things ahead clearly, I had no doubt
that there were horrors up ahead.
I glanced at Wendell. He was staring half out the plastic passenger window; they were so
pockmarked with dust and grit that it was a pointless exercise. He was merely hiding from me
the fact he was checked out once more. I glanced at Billy. He was smoking thougtfully, lost in
his own thoughts, which, from the look on his face, centered around whatever darkness had
suddenly become apparent to me.
Mind giving me a hint? I nudged Wendell gently. Under normal circumstances, I would have
given him a good jab under the ribs with my elbow, but I was suddenly concerned that, if I did,
Wendell might snap and strike out at me, or worse. Things didn't seem normal at all now.
They seemed like a cross between that Night of the Living Dead movie and Body Snatchers.
And something else I had never seen on the silver screen while Lucia clutched my knee and
squealed into my vest. But that something was familiar. Familiar in its terror.
I banked that thought, tagged it for later consideration. Wendell hadn't responded to me, just
turned his head and peered through the dusty windscreen until he saw whatever he needed
to see along the mesa.
We're almost there, was all he said.
What the fuck, I thought to myself. Could this get any more creepshow?
The focus of his vision was one of the missile base doors set into the mesa. These were giant
concrete and steel bastards that were three feet thick and, between the pair of them, could
open wide enough to let five tanks enter abreast.
The Gates of Mordor, I thought, surprising myself by the vehemence of my internal voice. I
had seen these doors (gates, I amended instantly in my mind) before, when I had first come
to work at China Lake. They were just missile base doors, like any others I had seen. The

army, now the army and the air force, had dozens of them all over the world. But today,
maybe it was just the weirdness of my companions' actions, or maybe it was that sense of
'popping' out of my life's reality, but those big bay doors didn't look like neato, or amazing, or
coolio creations today. Their open maw loomed like the darkness I had been sensing, the
weight of the steel in their doors emanated a heavy finality at the jeep's approach.
The M.P. Drove the jeep right into the maw of the mountainside, light turned to dark, the
rumble of vulcanized rubber on sand turned to the eel-slippery hiss of the same on polished
cement. We were totally in the dark for a moment before the M.P. Turned on the jeep's
headlights. In that time, I couldn't help myself. I turned and watched the now faint desert light
streaming through the opening recede at an almost terrifyingly rapid rate. The weight of the
mountain pressing down on us was palpable; its immensity quailed the rays of light as they
entered the doorway. They were weak and flaccid, and didn't even try to follow me into the
darkness.
I turned forward in my seat just as the M.P. Turned on the headlights. My eyes widened and
my cigarette hung off my lip as I took in the true scale of the tunnel through which we sped.
As far as the headlights could reach, the tunnel stretched out in a completely straight line. I
glanced behind us just in time to see that the infintesimally small square of light from the
entrace was being eclipsed relentlessly by the cement we had travelled. It winked out
abruptly, and we were in darkness. So we were headed down, I thought.
The driver slowed the jeep, gingerly and early as the brakes locked up like bulls' horns on the
cement. A string of overhead lights and side-mounted lamps greeted us, and blinked a
hypnotizing rhythm as they streamed past us. The side lamps were a peculiar blue-green, the
overheads the color of massive hangar or gymnasium lights. I looked down at my knees as
we came in for a landing at whatever our destination might be; it would be too easy to get
actually hypnotised by the lit tunnel after all this fear. Maybe that's what they wanted, I
wondered to myself. Tenderize me up with some grim Kafka action. I frowned to myself,
picking at the edges of my thumbs in what I knew was a degenerate nervous habit but now
was the best way I had at flaring off the very legitimate terror of being swallowed by a
mountain while in the custody of people I thought were my friends but now I was legitimately
concerned were going to disappear me or beat me or maybe chow down on me or worse.
I hazarded a glance up at the windshield. The lights were slowing in their undulating passage
past us, but still easy to get hypnotized. There was precious little else to see except for their
regular emanations. There was, however, a bright patch up ahead. It was a large muster area
at the end of the tunnel. It was painted white. I could see crates and boxes and machinery
and all sorts of regular army type stuff. There were more missile defense doors, these ones
painted blue. Workers moved things about. They had colored coveralls on, ones that were
brilliant orange. They looked like linesman for the electrical grid, but they were doing regular
swamping. But this was it- end of the line.
There was a pause, like a very slow softball had been lobbed into the air and then came down
again in a player's mit.
End of the line, Billy echoed my thoughts with a murmur. I was surprised, and ferreted that
away for perusal at a safer time. I was not usually the kind of guy that could push people's
minds. I wasn't the sort of guy that could make his pals go to this club over that club, have his

wife fix this for dinner instead of that... not with my thoughts, anyway. I was persuasive, very
much so, and could keep up a handy banter that would make a guy think he had wanted to go
to the Cabana instead of the Steakhouse all along, but I had never, never seen that sort of
thing translate outside my own head without prompting before. I knew it could have been an
archetypal kind of thought- it was very common parlance, after all. But I don't know how to
explain it, there was just this lag on my thought, like a trail of a flare in the dark night sky. Up,
up, over, over... plummeting down and.... into Billy's head. When he said it, it sounded like it
was me. Not that he said it in my voice, exactly, but that what he said- that was me.
Might be the only way to get your scrawny ass out of this hole, you're gonna remember that, I
warned myself with a grim macabre certainty that was also surprisingly uncharacteristic. I
gulped, and hoped no one heard. The jeep was coming to a stop by a little loading dock near
to the blue doors.
I hadn't been able to pick it out through the windscreen and the flashing lights, but there was
actually a rail line that ran right down through the doors. They were just now backing up a
boxcar to the dock. The engine they were using was some kind of electric, I spotted that as
soon as I climbed out my door on the driver's side. It was silent, and not a stitch of exhaust. It
moved the sizeable boxcar with swift efficiency. I took a step around the jeep and as soon as I
was clear I felt the skin on my forearms crawl with energy. That little ring around my ankles
that told me I was in the presence of a heavy electromagnet pinched up tight. My throat
clenched.
What is that, I asked Wendell. A magnetic train?
Wendell looked down at me and smiled. It was a strange, almost patriarchal smile, as though
he were many years my senior and I had done him proud.
It is, he advised me. You are absolutely right.
I whistled, walking as close to the bright yellow engine as I could without my body crickling
with too much potential. I felt my lungs want to close up, and I stopped, took a step back as
the engine closed the remaining distance between itself and me. I took a moment to look at
the boxcar.
It was tall, far taller than seemed safe for the thin rail of the line. But that made sense, didn't it,
if you weren't relying on a truly mad combination of gravity, inertia and sheer guts to pull your
cargo down the line. It was made of some kind of shiny metal. Probably aluminum, but it was
thick and durable like steel. Those orange jumpsuits started packing boxes into it as soon as
the engine stopped.
To my surprise, another little device came scooting down the tracks and went from full speed
to stopped in about six feet. It came to a rest about half a foot from the engine. My eyebrows
climbed. This was futuristic shit they had down here. In spite of the warning bells that the
fibres of my being had bestowed upon me, the engineer in me was delighted. The facts that
the magnetics of the track felt like death and the entire muster area was cloaked in that same
dull, foreboding doom that had settled on Billy and was ground into our driver faded in my
mind.
A General got out of the little scootabout, as I had already come to call it. He had his hat in his

hand and he put it on his head with practised motion. He strode across the loading bay and
hopped down the steps. He was not affected by the dull, oppressive flavor of the world under
the mountain. My heart opened a bit more. Perhaps not everyone would succumb to the
bleakness of the place? This General had a spring in his step, surely.
I looked at his face, however, as he made his way over to us. He was smiling, at me mostly,
his eyes locked on my own. Any thought I had that maybe this place was only for the brave,
or the visionary, evaporated. There was nothing at all in his eyes that jivved with the jaunty
movements I had seen. They were an act, as practised as anything Ginger Rogers and Fred
Astaire ever devised. They, like his immaculate uniform and shiny, manicured nails, were
designed to draw my affection after the disturbing entry into the subterranean. They were a
red herring of normal in this upside down world. I was to cleave to them, and to this man
staring too hard right at me as he approached. My buddy. My friend. A kindred spirit down
here in the dark.
My biggest enemy, I thought to myself as I looked into those eyes. They were black, perhaps
dilated from the dimness of his carrier, perhaps darkened by something else. By something
down here. I could see as he closed the remaining distance between us that they were
technically grey, but they were just... dark. Black. It looked from even a middle distance as
though his eyes were all pupil. And they never blinked.
His face was chiseled like a General's should be, but his skin was weathered in all the wrong
ways. Thick like the deep base M.Ps skin, like a cow hide instead of human skin. Dark
brownish purple from all the venuous blood in it. Visible even under his tan. His features were
off, too; nose too pinched and hawklike, chin a little crooked, brow ridges... they were
crooked, too. His eyes were different heights on his face, like he had had the living shit
pounded out of him and then some very decent doctors had put him back together. Not like a
mask, but like a face that had been reconstructed as best they could.
I could see no scars on the thick, rough skin, but that's what his untrustworthy visage made
me think. Reconstructed. Reconstituted General, I thought. And he wants to be my special
buddy.
Welcome to Blue Base, Mr. Stark, the General welcomed me with outstretched hand. He
had a West Point ring on his finger. His voice had that same really deep, husky tone, thick of
syllable, that the deep base M.Ps had. Like a heavyweight boxer, or a street thug. Big, big
voicebox, large, large lung capacity. And too much muscle in the tongue and the jaw to be
deft enough to make the words come out with reasonable alacrity.
I'm General Wallace, he added. Director of Operations on this base.
I shook his hand with what I hoped was less hesitation than I felt. I offered him my best
charming smile, and tried to let him know with my eyes that Mr. Charm was now my super
buddy, that his plan was working. Pleased to meetcha, General, I told him. What can I do
for you today?
Walk with me, he said, and I quirked my head to the side. Two of those in one day, in one
hour. Well, that was strange, wasn't it, I remarked. The file marked, For Later, was growing
quickly. I did as he said and walked beside him. He was taking me up the dock steps and

toward the little scootabout. My fingers and toes were tingling like I had fallen asleep on them
and they were just waking up. I wasn't certain I could grab something with reliability at the
moment. I would have to train myself to do things in this strong electromagnetic field,
apparently.
The General turned and very deliberately blocked the door to the craft he had, just a moment
before, been pointedly walking me toward. I stopped, tried to look idly at him, mild curiosity,
no more. Do not betray any strong emotion at this point, I warned myself.
I hear you're a very gifted man when it comes to connecting the dots, General Wallace
informed me.
I tried my best to look nonchalant. His words, while delivered as a compliment, had clearly
been chosen for the ominous undertones they could imply. I was too in the thick of things to
be taken on a giant circle jerk straight to stockade, so he was just trying to unseat me. I gave
a shrug, a self-effacing smile.
You got some dots? I asked, meeting his gaze.
The General gave a hearty, barking laugh that started too soon and ended abruptly. It
reminded me of his little scootabout, rocketing out of the blue bay doors and stopping on a
nickel- on half a dime.
Yes, I certainly do, son, he told me, and ushered me into his vehicle. I tried to cover my gulp
as I ducked my head into the small doorway and sat down.
It was remarkably roomy inside for its outer dimension. A well-designed, ergonomic space. It
could seat four, and after a minute, Wendell Howell joined us. He sat, unsurprisingly, by the
General. The door eased into place automatically.
You see, the General told me as I felt the magnetic torque ramp up. I felt as though the top
layer of my skin was being peeled off by the force of it. Nothing I could do now, so I focused
instead on the verbal engagement in front of me.
We've got some of these little holes in the wall all over, and we need to find a way to connect
them all up. He and Wendell stared at me, Wallace with that penetrating gaze, Wendell with
a faraway one. The combination was somewhat disconcerting. It seemed as though I was at
once supremely disinteresting and provocatively fascinating at the same time. I ignored this
effect and focused, again, on the point to the General's veiled words.
So you want a tunnel for one of these babies, I patted the wall of the vehicle. It shuddered
slightly under my touch- it must be powering up for takeoff, or whatever you'd call it. Want to
be able to move things from point A to point B using those handy metal boxcars, instead of
C-50s or trucks.
The General's right eye twitched. He paused, and his chumly facade faltered ever so slightly. I
had hit the nail directly on the head, and I watched what happened as I did so. An almost
classically human shadow passed over his face- had I been spying on them? It was
impossible, I saw his brow uncrease and crease, telling me that. What was I, exactly, that I

could rebuild ancient Roman aqueducts and make underground streams flow again where
they had not since the war began? Springing from nothing more than dry earth? What was I
that I figured this out?
Then, and this chilled me more than anything, he dismissed his human querying. He clicked it
away from his mind, not into a file marked For Later, or even trod down into his subconscious.
He discarded it as irrelevant, immaterial to his job. And what I caught out of his mind was the
truly terrifying part. The detached scorn that crossed his face like a fast cloud moving over the
sun froze me cold. He didn't care what I was that I could figure this out and fix up that. He had
seen all kinds of freaky shit down here, and he knew that it could do stuff he couldn't possibly
imagine. He didn't need to imagine it- because now he had me. And whatever I was that I
could surprise him momentarily it didn't matter one whit. I was just another of the anomalies
that lived down here, worked down here, now; fantastic freaks that made up the things that
had calloused his sanity to the point that everything about him that was normal was faked.
That was worse. But the worst thing was that I caught out of his eyes clearly, as clearly as I
am talking to you now, what label he put on that sort of freak of nature. Maybe it was a
resonance effect of the magnetic field that let me pick up his thought, or put my own into Billy'
head earlier. Maybe it was the mountain, or maybe I was just so crazy freaked out I was
careening wild talents about in an attempt to get an edge. But right when he dismissed me as
an indivual he had to keep his sanity intact around, right after his face flicked me away with
scorn, his eyes flashed at me and he thoughtalien.
My back was crawling now, and it was different from the effects of the train. It was terror. I
realized that the darkness I had seen was still lying before me, or rather, behind my back as I
sat in the rearward facing seat of the scootabout. It was still there, and my special buddy
General Wallace had just put a name to the writhing monsters in the dark. Flashes of comic
books and movies whirled through my head. Metal men with lights coming out of their eyes.
Strange colored men with deely boppers on their heads. Monstrosities better represented with
a paintbrush and ink than with costume and cellulose. That was what was waiting for me
when this train got underway.
So why then did he call me the same as them? Why did he look at me like I was half-crazy,
half-useless, all irrelevant?
Because, dumbass, my mind chastised me, he thinks you're the same as them. You can both
do the things he cannot comprehend. So you are alien. To him.
The door swung open slowly. I wondered for a moment if my abject, screaming caterwauling
terror had shorted out the train.
Absolute shock mingled with quailing dispair as I saw that we had arrived at a totally different
station. The loading dock was not makeshift, nor was it conventional. It was some kind of
smoothed, highly molded concrete or rock and was painted white with green. Beyond the very
swish platform was a stairwell, and a set of corridors. Some people in jumpsuits and a few in
army and airforce uniforms were walking by on their regular business.

We're here, General Wallace informed me with a somewhat vicious tone in his gravelly
voice. I had betrayed myself and he had seen. I had no idea we were even moving. His
games had won over me, and now he had a very big piece of the puzzle that was my mind.
Where my weak spots were. I oriented based on cues of the beings and structures around
me. That was a lot of information to just fucking hand over to a man who thought of you as
some alien piece of chattel or some thing.
I took another look out at the platform again while Wendell stood up and made his way out.
There was no point to hiding my bedazzlement at this; that cat was a long ways out of the
bag.

Level Seven
By Virginia Carraway Stark
I remember thinking a lot of things but what I remember most was thinking of my father and
what he would think and a dark quiet part of my mind, the part that wonders all dark thoughts
and protects us from betrayal, wondering if he had had some small part in my abduction.
How to explain... here's your explanation. My life, my abduction and my 'death' were fucked.
They still are. I'm not going to try to rationalize to you. I don't need to explain to you what a
homunculus is, I don't need to explain how one girl can have many parents. I don't need to
explain anything to you or anyone. This is the truth and no matter how I justify, explain,
educate or mitigate, you aren't going to believe a word of it and you're going to get it all
wrong.
I have many fathers, but the father I was thinking of in particular in this case had helped to
pioneer the program that I was inducted into into what was about to be the highest, or rather,
the lowest levels.
I was bound, gagged and drugged but I was aware. I burn through those chemicals quickly, all
part of the magic freak show that is me.
They had me on a trolley cart in the elevator. 5...4...3...2....1...B...-1...-2....-3...-4...-5,...-6...-7
The doors opened. My hands were wrapped around myself and bound with heavy leather
straps holding the straight jacket in place. They were taking no chances though, they had
bound my legs. I was wrapped up like an Egyptian Mummy and my black hair, still smelling of
dye fell across my eyes. It would be grown out and back to red by the time I got out of there.
The growing of my hair was the only way I had to tell time and it isn't as accurate as a clock. I
let my head loll forward when the elevator came to a stop. I had left it back to try to get an eye
full of where I was going but now I had to hide the fact that I was awake.
I was in some basement wing in level 7. I didn't now at the time what facility I was in but I'd
hear soon enough. Where didn't matter. All that mattered now was escape. Escape and play
possum until I could. I had no idea how fucked I really was, if I had known what came next I
would have been screaming and not had delusions of escape. I guess it's all the learning
curve of any new torture, it wouldn't be long before I would hear what it was called: Dulce.
I let my muscles go limp. Starting at my face and working down my neck and shoulders, my
arms and hands were hard. They wanted to resist the sturdy cruel straps but I made them
loosen. Anyone who touched me had to have the idea that I was still unconscious. I had to
count on them letting down their guard or I wouldn't have a chance in hell. Which was funny
because Hell was exactly what they all called the seventh level in the basement in Dulce.
They started to loosen the cargo straps that held me to the hand trolly. My relaxed body slid
as they started to unbind me and I wondered if I was about to have a hard landing but let
myself stay limp all the same. Hands stopped me before I hit the ground. They grabbed me by
the leather straps that went around me above me breasts and drug me so my legs were still
straight. I thought no thought, only stealing a peek or two of where I was with the merest

glimmer of a slit of my eye open from under my hair shrouded face.

She's still out cold, Said a rough voice.
Never assume that you ass or you'll get what you deserve one day and end up in one of the
goop bins, The other voice was cold and dry. Inhuman.
I felt a needle slide through the canvas and into my arm. The plunger pushed I felt a
substance sting my veins and dissipate up through me arm and down to my fingers and then
a deep sense of slumber came over me. I struggled against it. I had to remember where they
took me.
Staying awake was torture in itself. Sleep deprivation, the world spinning and they lifted me
up onto a hospital style bed. More straps to tie down the straps that held me.
Rough voice spoke again, Well, she's a fighter so I don't blame you for being careful.
Cool and dry replied, I see your face isn't looking so pretty, Jerry.
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, I repeated the name. I tried to remember how I had got here. Rough voice,
Jerry and some other goons had jumped me. Plain and simple. I had suspected something
was coming. A doom had fallen on me. I prayed to my God but he has few compunctions and
Dulce was a hell he was willing to spare me from.
I had killed one of them, it was with something long and silver, a letter opener with a seal at
the top of it. The seal was blue and red. Silver flashed as I grabbed the letter opener. The
men had walked out from around a hedge. I was walking, it was night time. It was warm, a
beautiful night that smelled like magnolia and honeysuckle. They were all big guys with
paunches. In their early forties, hair cut so short it was nearly shaved, dressed in black denim
pants, black t-shirts and black leather coats.
When I saw them I started fumbling in my purse for the letter opener. I pretended I didn't feel
my skin break out in goosebumps. I pretended the word Doom wasn't repeating in my mind. I
pretended not to notice that they were surrounding me. I didn't walk faster but breathed
deeply, calming my body systems so that my hands wouldn't shake. Walking faster was the
attitude of prey. Prey attempts half measures and predators go in for the kill. If predators
attack another predator, often a display of strength is enough to dissuade them from
continuing their attack.
No predator wants to risk injury with engaging another predator. That's nature channel 101.
Nature channel 102 is that 101 doesn't matter if the predators are desperate or want
something bad enough from the other predators. I already had my keys in one hand, I found
the letter opener but I didn't want to display it.
I pretended that I didn't see the men working to surround me, I pretended to be fearless. I was
fearless. I was fearless then. The fear would come much later. In the end though, all the fear
was burned from me and I was left cold. A Cold Killer. That's what they made me, but only
after they tore all my humanity from me. All my sweetness and smiles were replaced with the
icy cold eyes of blue steel and the judgement that I handed down from them. If what had

happened then happened now, I wouldn't hesitate and I would make sure that all of those
men had been dead or they would have had to kill me to save themselves. I learned to never
ever ever stop.
They increased their gait to catch up with my long but unhurried strides and surrounded me,
their leader, I think one of them called him Roger, stood in front of me on the sidewalk. I took
a side step to go around him, I was looking up now, making eye contact with him.
I wanted him to know that I had seen his face, that my eyes were unafraid and most of all that
I wasn't prey and that I would fuck him up. See my eyes, I'll get you at least as you get me, I
said with my gaze. I saw something else in his eyes though. He wasn't a run-of-the-mill
predator who wanted cash and a girl he could grab by the hair and drag behind the bush for
some of the 'old in-out, in-out' to quote A Clockwork Orange. This was not some droog, this
was a man on a mission.
I was defensive even as a predator, now I would know better and wouldn't have given them a
chance to make the first move.
I took a step to the other side, the other were closing in, Roger, I think his name was Roger
said, Hey sweetheart, we just want to talk to you, don't make this hard.
You don't look like someone I want to talk to, but tell you what, call my secretary and maybe I
can fit you in tomorrow.
You don't wanna get smart with me, He said and I saw the bulge of a gun when he put his
hands on his hips to splay his leather coat open and show the handgun that rested there.
I ceased all thinking process and let my body fall into fight mode. My heavy studded purse hit
Roger full on in the face, knocking him briefly out of my path. I started to run and felt someone
grab me by the back of my jacket, tangling with my newly black hair in their rough fingers. I
spun and jabbed the letter opener into the guy who had grabbed me by the throat and tore
downward. He looked bewildered and let go of me to grab his arterial spraying neck. I knew
now that I had waited too long, the black hair, the change in clothes, it had all come too late. I
had been in their sites too long.
One of the others ran to help his friend who had fallen to the ground. Roger had been sprayed
by the dying man's blood and one knock from my purse hadn't done much to slow him down.
Rough Voice Jerry, reached to grab me. I threw my purse in his face. It doesn't sound like
much but it weighs over five pounds, is studded with metal and has a clasp made out of thick
metal in the shape of brass knuckles. That sucker packed a punch.
The leader made a grab for me and held me by the jacket, I slid out of it, leaving it like a
molted snake skin in his hands and jumped on him, attacking his eyes, ears and nose with my
keys bristling out of my knuckles. I was a wild animal claws, keys and teeth. He grabbed my
arms to stop me and I bit his ear, tearing at it as hard as I could through the cartilage.
The guy with the rough voice pulled me off the leader and I hit him in the nose as hard as I
could with my small, yet very pointy elbow he screamed and turned away. His nose sprayed
blood that looked black on the sidewalk and he turned around cursing. I kicked him in the ass

as soon as he was turned to me and he ended up in the bushes.

Leader came at me again, I had lost the letter opener, I think it was when I shed my jacket,
but that part is blurry. I knew that except for my keys I had lost my light coat and only had a
tank top and bra underneath. I had no more armor, not much anyway. I had no concern about
losing my tank top if it meant wriggling free even for one more minute. Roger looked like he
meant business now. His ear was dripping blood, I hadn't managed to make him lose any of
the fleshy bits, but it wasn't exactly all the way attached anymore.
I ran, turned to Jerry and pushed myself more into his arms as though he were my lover. They
never expect that, surprised he let loose of me briefly and I turned in his embrace. For a
disphoric moment we may have looked like two embracing lovebirds. I brought up my knee
into his groin and he let me go, I gave him another punch in the nose and raked the keys
across my face. More hands. Roger.
Then I heard the car pull up. I should have felt relief flood me but the way it pulled up,
something about it, these were reinforcements for the baddies, they weren't the rescue
brigade. Roger punched me in the jaw, my head jerked back but I didn't let the impact stun
me, I fell back and limp with the blow. Resistance brings more pain. There is too much
adrenaline in your body for it to just fall over why you go limp, I left my body on autopilot and
punched him in the solar plexus with my hand that held the keys and then his groin with my
other hand. One, two, fuck you, I thought His jeans mostly protected him but he was still
screaming, Fuck you, you fucking bitch! So I knew I got him a little. Guys have a special little
scream when their impractical exteriorized organs get the whammy put on them.
Jerry came from behind and the guy who had gone to help his friend along into the afterlife
was back in the game. I looked at the vehicle, It had parked close to the curb and far enough
up so I couldn't see a plate on it. Black with tinted black windows, four more men came out of
the car, two of them with guns drawn.
Damn, I should have tried harder to get Leader Guy's gun but those holsters have a trick to
getting the gun out. You've got to unlatch the snap on the leather cover and push it forward
before lifting up and that isn't as easy to do as Hollywood makes it look. The other thing is that
guns set you off balance. Sure, their a great advantage to have over someone but only if you
know the weapon. Fighting for a gun isn't my style even when it meant that the bad guy got to
keep it and use me as target practice.
Guns or no, the place I had been ambushed in was on a hill and I had, at that moment, a
clear line of site down the hill. I was packed full of adrenaline and I bolted. Because that's the
way I'm wired. Run, always run if I can't fight. Regroup and come back for my plate of cold
revenge later. For now, flight was all that mattered. I ran diagonally and down across the road,
making the most of the steep incline. I heard more cursing behind me and car doors
slamming. A car was coming in the second lane, if I were an action hero I would have stopped
the car and jumped inside and gotten away.
But I wasn't an action hero, I was a girl fighting for my freedom, maybe for her life. I was glad
to use it as an incredibly temporary shield from bullets and made the most of it.
The car was coming too fast and I pumped my arms to get past it while it honked and kept up

it laborious journey up the hill. I heard gun fire then and felt something, like a wasp stink
burning my naked shoulder. I knew if I put a hand there that I would be bleeding but shoulder
wounds don't count for much. Not at the time, anyway. I heard car doors slam and tires
squealing in a u-turn.
Ahead of me was a partial chain link fence after a small field, if I could get past there, They
wouldn't be able to follow me in their black sedan. The ground was too broken up after that
and then there were building, convenience stores, someone, anyone to help a damsel in
distress. The car jammed into the bar holding the near side of the chain link fence where I had
planned to skirt around it and into the less than hospitable to cars broken up field.
My path blocked. No one around. The men poured out of the car, we were in a semi-industrial
area and there wasn't anyone around at this time of day. I started to scream for help anyway.
Rape! I screamed, Someone help me! Rape!
They were at close range now, Say that one more time and I'll give you something to scream
rape about after I jam my gun in my mouth to keep you the fuck quiet.
I closed my mouth and stood there in the headlights of the car. Bunch of mooks in black
leather, there were seven of them and one of me, I saw several guns pointed at me.
Drop your weapon and put up your hands, Driver said.
I smirked in the headlights and dropped my keys to the grass and gravel at my feet. You
would have thought it was a goddam bazooka that I had dropped instead of my keys the way
those men swarmed around me after I dropped them. That would be the last time I'd be
grinning for awhile but it was a pleasant thing to think of, seven big men afraid of a girl just
cresting five feet armed with her house keys.
They weren't gentle. They weren't cruel either and Driver didn't make good on his threats so I
guess that's a case for chalking one up for the good guys. They were all business and I
wished that it could have been a quick gang, 'how's your father'. These men weren't after sex,
they were after me. This was much worse.
Efficiently they grabbed me, cuffed me and then I felt the bite of a syringe in my neck. I
thought, In my fucking neck? Not cool, dude.
I was barely conscious when they had put the straight jacket on and I don't remember them
binding my legs. I woke up briefly just before they slammed the trunk shut on me. I
remembered thinking that they must've been piled in that vehicle like it was a clown car to fit
those seven heavy-sets into a mid-sized sedan.
I had woken up again when they were strapping me to the trolley. The hand trolley was in the
back of the car with me. It was orange and had chips of paint taken out of it exposing the
reddish metal underneath. I guess they did this a lot then, or maybe they just had a lot of
crates to move and tying a girl to it was a special occasion. I never saw any of them again to
ask. I did however, know that it wasn't a very comfortable thing to spend time in a trunk with
and my neck and back were stiff as hell.

Once I was strapped to the gurney I tried to keep track of the twists and turns but the drugs
were working and they do work on me. I just have an advantage, an advantage that Cool and
Dry was clearly aware of. I couldn't remember right to left and fell asleep. I could hear
screams. Screams and screams, the howls of the damned. Cries of torture, the zap of
electricity and the stench of death and decay. Burning hair and flesh. Whimpers of things, not
quite human things that were in constant pain. Those were the things I remembered as I
faded in and out, not how many turns we had made. That and thinking that the word, 'gurney'
was such an ugly word.
The gurney was pushed into a room. A concrete room with a steel door. Without ceremony
they left and I fell asleep. I fell asleep and was glad just for the respite. I didn't think anything
else.
When I woke up I was momentarily disoriented and then when I struggled on the gurney to sit
up and found I was still in the straight jacket and firmly anchored in all directions I had a
moment of utter panic. I wanted to scream for help. My hands and feet were cold and numb
and my legs and arms hurt from the long immobility.
I didn't scream. I didn't scream. I wanted to scream but I didn't scream. That was what they
wanted and then what? Then what indeed?
I calmed myself by counting, first just numbers and then as I woke up more I counted cracks
in the cement ceiling, the only thing I could see of the room was the ceiling and top corners of
the walls.
Level 7. I remembered. That's where I was. I was here and no one knew it. I was lost to the
world and at the mercy of whoever, or whatever, my traitor mind whispered to me, came
through the door.
I could see that there was a camera watching me. I could assume there was a microphone on
it. I could assume that, if they cared, that they knew I was awake and were waiting for me to
break. They would want me to panic, to scream. Maybe one of them would be my hero and
come and untie me and soothe me and tell me that if I just did what he said he could protect
me from this sort of treatment. What good friends the two of us would be.
My mouth was parched and dry. I didn't even know if I could scream it felt like my throat would
crack open with dryness. Once noticed the thirst consumed all my concentration.
I tried to focus on the events of the previous night. What had happened. I closed my eyes and
brought the memory back. I brought their faces back. I brought each movement back. What
could I have done differently? How could I have defeated them? Try as I could, I couldn't see
what I could have done differently except to not have gone out. What was I going out for? I
couldn't remember that part. It was squished against my need for a drink.
What happened next? Have you ever been interrogated and not known what you were being
interrogated about? It was that, it was so much worse too.
My memory falters in and out here. A tall, gray alien with black bug eyes came and gave me a
drink. The water was bitter but I drank it. He touched my hair, my face, the part of my neck

that was exposed with his long, fleshy fingers. He asked me in my mind my name and then
when I didn't supply it fast enough he pulled it out of my mind with a lurching jerk in my head
that hurt more than the untended bullet wound on my shoulder.
I cried out and squeezed my eyes shut.
Are you still thirsty, meat bag?, He/It asked.
Yes, please, water.
Don't use your filthy mouth to speak with. Its voice was filled with disgust. It left and I heard
the sound of water running, there was a sink in the room, then. That was good. If I could get
them to untie me I could have water.
IF we untie you, It reminded me with what could only be called a mental smirk. Outwardly It's
face was expressionless. It was like trying to interpret the feelings of a fly or an ant by looking
at their faces.
It gave me more water. This water was less bitter but tasted like iron piping.
It stood and watched me and then it lifted its head. It had two small holes in its face that it was
scenting the air with. It moved towards me and I felt its small, toothless mouth feeling along
my skin. I would have pulled away then if I could have, but I couldn't so I just breathed in and
out, in and out. Its mouth found the bullet wound and I felt a rough tongue lapping up the
blood and plasma that had covered it.
This seemed to go on forever but such unpleasant physical things can take a short period of
time and without a clock can seem like hours. It was a horrible violation but there was no
escape, I counted types of colors in my mind, azure, amethyst, saffron, yellow, sunshine,
white, cream, ivory...
I hypnotized myself away and let him do what he wanted to do. It was no different than any
other unpleasant task. It still left a filthy feel and I hated every second of it. I thought of playing
in the hay bales as a child. I thought of playing 'jump' from one monolithic bale to another. I
thought of my brother laughing and calling me a scaredy cat when I hesitated (not fair, he was
taller than me, he had longer legs) and then jumping and making it and the call of
grasshoppers and the somehow sweet and not unpleasant smell of sheep dung.
After he was done he stood and watched me. I felt dirty and then, even stronger than before, I
felt It digging through my mind. Even though I could tell it was reading my mind, only flashes
of thought came to mind for me and I didn't know what It wanted to know about how I had a
played in my brother's tree house or what I thought of my high school biology teacher. Maybe
it learned everything it needed to right there and all the rest was window dressing. I don't
know because hell is the place where nothing is ever explained to you and each now horror
comes without understanding. What will happen next? What did I do to deserve this new
pain? It would never be explained, only endured and endured.
I replayed the scene on the hay bales, playing tag. The smell of the dry hay the sweetest
smell in the world and dandelion and poplar seeds floating through the air.

The thing left and after awhile a human came in. Did the monster get what he wanted from my
mind? How to tell when their motives were like them: alien. This new human looked like a
regular person, not some thug, he released the straps that held me to the gurney and then
looked at me carefully and spoke slowly as though I may not understand English or even
speech very well.
If I untie you, will you be a good girl for me? No hurting? Just a good girl? He asked. Oh, I
thought, this one is the good one that I will shortly build a bond with and come to trust.
Yes, I answered. I meant it too. I wanted to be free of the straight jacket and I had no grudge
against this man, perhaps he would even prove to be an ally. Doubtful, but this girl does have
her wiles.
If you try anything at all, you will be punished and tied up again, do you understand me? He
reiterated.
Yes, I understand. Please, I replied.
He briefly met my gaze and then averted his eyes as though looking at me caused him pain,
or as though he's scared of pain. Maybe you're not the only one here who gets punished if
you do things. Maybe he has to be a good boy or he gets punished.
Looking at the man I found it hard to believe, but there was no other reason for his aversion to
meeting my gaze. That and the way he spoke to me, as though I were a dangerous and
mentally challenged criminal, there were layers here that I wasn't even beginning to scratch
the surface of. Playing 'good cop' didn't usually mean these subtle signs of fear.
He untied me and it had been pointless of me to promise not to hurt him because I had been
bound for so long that I couldn't even control my limbs. I couldn't have swatted a fly, let alone
hurt a full grown man. When he helped me to sit up I realized I still had more drugs in my
system than I thought and they hit me so hard I almost fell back down again.
The man murmured something under his breath, I didn't know what, unlike the alien (And by
the way, did you really see that? Was that just a nightmare from the drugs and the trauma?) I
couldn't read minds. He put one of my arms around his neck and helped me the few steps to
the cot. I propped myself up in the corner. There were no blankets or pillows.
You could kill yourself if you had those, they don't want that, no escape that way. You would
have been better off to let them shoot you. I hated that traitor voice in my head. It was stupid
anyhow. No one can just let themselves fall off that cliff. No one should any way. Every minute
of life is a win. Every breath a victory.
I saw once I was seated with the wall to prop me up that the man must be a doctor or
care-taker of some sort. He had brought some things with him.
Please, take off your clothes and change into these, He said, putting a neatly folding
hospital gown, robe and paper slippers on the foot of the bed.
I tried to comply but my hands simply wouldn't work and so he helped me to take off my top,

bra, shoes, socks, pants and underwear, always averting his eyes from my eyes and my
body. Always treating me like a think and not a woman.
He tied the gown for me. There was no cruelty in him about it. He helped me with the robe
and the paper socks. He turned to go.
I called out to him, my voice was still cracking with thirst, Please, I'm cold and thirsty.
He sighed and rubbed his temples. He had put my clothing on the gurney along with the
straight jacket and other straps. He poured me a paper cup of water and carefully helped me
to drink when he saw that I couldn't make my fingers work to hold it.
Someone else will decide if you get a blanket.
I was freezing, both from the chill emanating from the cement and the shock, Please, help
me, I begged.
He glanced once, surreptitiously and quickly at the camera and then crumpled the paper cup
in his fist and put it with the rest of my things on the gurney, I've done more than enough for
you already.
He unlocked the door with a pass code and a scan of his thumbprint and then wheeled the
gurney from the room. The steel door closed again with a slam. I was worried, this wasn't how
these things were supposed to play out. He had made no attempt to really be my ally, no
attempt to by my friend. He was too fearful. There was something here that stunk.
I curled up on the cot and did my best to put my cold feet under my robe with my hands that
moved like blocks of wood. The feeling in them was starting to return and the pain of the pins
and needles was nearly as unbearable as my thirst had been. I rocked gently to keep the
blood moving and to soothe myself. If I went into shock, I would die as surely as if I had been
shot. Had the alien really lapped at my bullet wound like a cat laps up milk?
I shuddered even more. The room was lit with a grotesque greenish light. I closed my eyes
and thought of the sun on my face and the smell of magnolia and honeysuckle. I thought of
lying in a hammock in the backyard with the sun dancing on my skin between the dappling of
the leaves of the magnolia trees that grew there and rocked and rocked. I recited soliloquy
after soliloquy in my head, I had learned Hamlet's famous soliloquy first and it was easiest to
recall in need:
To be or not to be-that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleepNo more-and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleepTo sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
I stopped and tried another one, the poem Jabberwocky, Dear Lewis Carrol. So much less
painfully true to think of Jabberwokies and The Walrus and The Carpenter than the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune. Too apt, darling Shakespeare. You are too close to the truth as
always, let me fill my mind with kittens and nonesense, Lewis Carrol has the better of it. I had
to distract myself because I couldn't think about reality, the world without me was what I
couldn't think about. Damn you Hamlet.
It might sound funny, but when you are taken captive it isn't the fear or bewilderment that get
to you the most, it isn't even the torture. At least, that's the way it was for me, those things
were symptoms and I never knew if this was the time that they dragged me through the halls
for the last time. The part that was hardest for me was wondering about my loved ones. Had
someone remembered to feed my turtle? Had they been told a lie about where I was? Did
they just put up a 'missing' poster and I was vanished from their lives.
I tried to send them messages with my mind as best I could. It sounds crazy, but when you
have nothing in your life but time, you do crazy things. When fear dominates your every
move, your every minute, things that seem crazy to someone sitting in a comfy chair or at a
table with a cup of coffee, seems totally sane to you then. Fear. Alone. Wondering. The
always wondering part. That hurt more than anything else.
I wondered if my family had been captured too. I wondered if they were in this hell hole
somewhere. I feared for them and hoped and hoped that they were safe and that somehow I
could tell them where I was and what was happening to me.
What was happening to me?
Well, there were a lot of things happening to me as well as a lot of empty blank silences. I
didn't mind it too much when they left me in my room alone. I could retreat deep in my mind
and find tranquil pools of water, love, green grass, the blowing wind. When I was left tied up
for hours or returned to my cell in pain, my mind schismed and blown by arcs of blue
lightning, then I could only whimper, cry or scream and scream to be let out. Nobody minded
how much you screamed, there was no one to hear me, no one except the other denizens of
level seven.
I'm not going to go into lurid details. You don't need to know the fear I felt when they strapped
the electrodes to me. You don't need to hear how I pleaded that I would do anything if they
just wouldn't shock me again. The dread and anticipation of the pain was almost worse than
the actual feel of the voltage running through my body.
Mad scientists the lot of them. That was what level seven was made up of. If little girls are
made of sugar and spice and everything nice and little boys are made up of snails and puppy
dog tales, then level seven was made up of horror and dread and everything waiting to be

dead, that's what level sevens are made of.

They were human and inhuman, hybrids and things that would now be identified as aliens but
once would have been called demons. They didn't care if any of the test subjects died. They
were added to the vats, the big vats that stank and were filled with a sort of acid and chopped
up parts of everything that was experimented on and failed. Every day as I was dragged past
those vats I wondered: is this the day? The day my suffering will end?
I don't want to tell you more about the sorts of experiments that went on, not in detail. That's
between me, myself and I. There were insulin comas where hypnotic suggestions were
repeated again and again while we victims slipped in and out of consciousness. There was
electroshock that was sometimes presaged by being hypnotized and/or drugged or
sometimes followed by the same or sometimes was just done for the hell of it.
There were injections of strange things, some that burned like fire all through my bloodstream
and others that knocked me out, others that made me crazy, paranoid, terrified. I woke up
after one and I had ripped my hands bloody on the concrete walls trying to escape. There
were other things that happened. Some of them were clear to me. The removal of eggs from
my ovaries, blood from my veins, marrow from my bones. Experiments.
I walked by the vile monsters in cages, half human, half 'other' and wondered how long it
would be until I walked by those cages and some of those hybrids would be my own children.
Made from my own eggs with god knows what, crying, sobbing, laughing, screaming. Mad,
we were all mad down there and if we weren't when we came we soon came to be mad.
The alien doctors came and talked with their minds or didn't talk at all. Farmers don't often
talk to cattle set to be slaughtered and we were nothing more than that to them, cattle. I knew
that when I saw one of the alien doctors one day, scooping goo from the great vats of carnage
with a ladle into a big pot before taking a big bite out of it. In the end we were just chum for
the sharks and the sharks were the ones in the boat while they ate us. They made their
disdain so very clear.
The human scientists kowtowed to the aliens. It wasn't a riddle to figure out who was in
charge.
The humans were often underlings or even in many cases entire rubes who had no idea what
was going on. They weren't stupid though and as time went on they figured out the score.
They were told that I was insane. They were told that everyone on level seven was criminally
and dangerously insane and that we should never be spoken to or listened to under any
circumstances. It was too dangerous to talk to us.
The men didn't always follow the rules though and it was hard for them, especially when they
had to deal with the women and the children, especially the small ones.
I pleaded with them, begged them to find my family, told them that people would be looking
for me and gave them my name again and again. All concept of dignity had faded with the
passing of the days? How long? Who could say? Most of the men ignored me, ignored the
people and things I saw in cages. I thought that all the men did, but there was one man who
didn't. He asked me one question, Where is your family?

I told him and then he didn't reply, just looked at me, I memorized his face in that brief
exchange between souls. Then he left and locked me in my cell again.
I didn't hold my breath on him finding me help. Even if he found my family the best that I could
hope for would be that he could tell them my fate. I was a lost soul in the depths of hell and I
was losing my sanity and my body was breaking,
But after at time, it seemed that even hell had, at least momentarily run out of its repertoire
and I was given some respite.
There was a hesitation in the tortures that were visited on me. I saw the man who had asked
me where my family was again, although he and I exchanged no words. I still wondered if the
camera had picked up our brief exchange. He never gave me his name and wore no name
tag. He was just, The man who had asked me where my family was.
One day, The man who had asked me where my family was brought me a stack of books.
They were old and had pages missing and some of them had mildew on them but I was
eternally grateful to him. To have not even a pen and paper, not a a book, nothing but my own
mind to plague me was starting to make all the safe places that I hid in my mind fade. I was
starting to lose the idea that there had ever been anything in my life but this insane place and
constant pain.
It was impossible to tell the passage of time down there. They brought me food at what
seemed to me to be completely random intervals. I finished the stack of books and read them
again. I didn't see the man who had given them to me again for a long time and then it was
briefly and he was dying. I never knew his name. Before the last time, though, I didn't know if
he had told my family where I was, what was happening, or if he had been caught out for
being kind to me and fired. They didn't take my stack of books from me, they seemed to be
losing interest in me. I hoped they were, even if that meant they would eliminate me soon, at
least it would be over.
One day the door to my cell opened again and alien doctors and their human counterparts
came in. The humans spoke loudly and professionally, calling me by my number and ordering
me loaded onto a gurney that some soldiers had brought in with them. I didn't fight, I didn't
even have to be told, I got up from the bed, slowly and painfully and climbed onto the gurney.
I put my hands down while they fastened the restraints. I prayed that maybe this was it,
maybe this was the end. God help me, I hadn't done anything to warrant this hell. Not for
eternity.
They wheeled me through the halls, I had once tried to memorize them for escape but my
mind only paid attention to the twists and turns we took now as a game. A way to distract
myself and not wonder about what might be coming at the end of whatever hallway we
entered.
I had had pelvic exams and 'work' done on me before. It was a trial and when they lifted my
legs up and put my feet in stirrups I started to cry silent tears. If only I could go far away, I
started my own escape hatch, a device in my mind I had constructed to get away when the
pain was too much. I had to leave quickly. Anything with the stirrups was bad. It was some of

the hardest pain to endure although I won't say the hardest because each thing at the time
was the hardest in many ways. Even when the doctor would unfasten me and say, 'There
now, that wasn't so bad'. It was so bad. They lied like that because they were still human
somewhere and it helped them to sleep at night to say things like that.
They started an iv and then the pain began. The pain was great, I could see that they were
using tools on me and instead of sinking to lower levels of consciousness I fled my body
altogether. The machinery that monitored my stats started to beep long and high and I
watched from above with little interest in the scene below.
I had grown very thin and I was bruised and battered but not worse than someone who had
been in a bar fight, not from the outside. The inside was where they did the damage. I was
wearing a hospital gown and my skinny knees hung on loose hinges flopping outward. I saw
that they injected things into me and the heart monitor started to make blips again. I felt a
tugging to return to my body but I didn't want to and I resisted.
A cord tied me to the body below me, it looked like it was sleeping and I could hear the
doctors discussing it but the words, 'just get it done, we'll worry about it later' produced a large
device that looked like a syringe that was inserted into me and a creamy bluish fluid injected
into my holy of holies.
Some more things were done to my body but I was only interested in how to get away. I was
tied firmly to the body below me and I didn't know how to get untied. After awhile I was jerked
roughly as they pulled the gurney around and out of the room. I was towed along behind like a
helium balloon. Once back in the cell one of the human doctors took my vitals and discussed
the matter with the others, I heard words like, 'coma', and 'lack of any response to stimulus.'
The alien doctors gave their orders. I could tell, not because I could hear them, but because
of the silence that fell and then everyone started to move in response to the silent commands.
Something was injected into the iv bag and I was startled by a jerking on the cord that tied
me. It was like be a bass and slowly reeled in. There was no escape, the hooks were too
deep. I woke up with a gasp and my eyes flew open. A doctor, I remember only because he
had remarkable green eyes took my vitals again while the others left. He released me from
the restraints and ordered a soldier to carry me to my bed.
We need you to lie down for awhile, do you understand? He asked me.
I nodded, Please help me.
Just rest yourself, you'll feel better soon, he lied.
I lied in bed after he left, a soldier was left in the room, I suppose to make sure I didn't die or
to make sure that I obeyed and stayed in bed. Either way he was one of the men who was
like a robot and he didn't react to anything except disobedience. I had dealt with his kind
before and knew that he could stand where he was for hours doing nothing, barely breathing,
and then react with lighting reflexes if I so much as made a move to put a foot on the floor.
I didn't feel like defying anyone then, I was tired and I slept.

I suppose time passed. Probably days, I read the stack of books again. I wasn't called on to
do much except to supply urine and blood to a technician who came in regularly and to allow
a doctor to take my vitals. Once in awhile an alien doctor would come in and I would feel him
leafing through my head like a binder of paper and then he would leave again.
The day of reckoning was coming, but I had no way of knowing that. I had no way of knowing
anything. One day I heard noise in the hallway. This was unusual because it was punctuated
with the screaming soldiers make, more like hollering, when they give commands and then
staccatoed with gunfire.
I sat up in bed. I had blankets now and I had them pulled up to my chin, I was clutching my
legs. I was covered in gooseflesh and my heart beat rapidly. But I dared not, I didn't hope to
hope. Hope would break what little was left of me if it was dashed once more. Still, a part of
my very essence couldn't help but think, 'This is it, this is escape. I am not forgotten.'
It was the explosions that made me start to hope and when I heard them coming down the
hall I got out of bed and peered on tiptoe out of my high prison window. I could seen little or
nothing usually but now I saw something unmistakeable: flames. I watched and another
explosion went off, I heard the sound and saw the flames shoot into the hallway, reflecting off
the cement and lighting up my face.
I ran to my bed and turned it on its side, breathless with hope now I turned the legs towards
the door and blocked myself against the far corner of the room. Someone was going down the
hallway and blowing the doors off their hinges with what I suspected was C4.
The explosions came closer and then I could hear David's voice. He had come for me. He
had found a way. He was yelling orders over the sound of explosions and I heard a familiar
voice that I couldn't quite place responding to him. They had found me. They hadn't given up
on me.
My door exploded. The metal door shooting halfway across the room while bits of shrapnel
rained down on the bed I had erected as my make-shift bunker. David poked his head into the
room, Anyone in here?
I stood up, my legs wobbling under me with adrenaline, hope and terror. Had I managed to
get him killed as well? Was there any way to escape level seven alive? It didn't matter for the
moment I saw him and he saw me and we ran to each other and he held me tight to him. I
wanted to collapse in his arms but it was too soon. We weren't safe yet.
Al! I found her! David called down the hall.
Al ran was down the hallway, I could see his large frame spraying bullets as he guarded the
mouth of the hallway.
That's great, but there's a lot of them coming in this direction! Any chance either of you know
another way out? Al called back to us.
There's a side elevator, I remember seeing it. I don't know how it works, I would assume
there's a key card or a code or something needed.

Lets deal with that when we get to it. Can you walk?
Yes, I can run, I can do anything if it means we have a shot at getting out of here.
He handed me a loaded gun and some extra shells in a leather pouch that I hung around my
neck. It was absurdly heavy. Barefoot and naked except for the gown, gun and leather
satchel, I led the way. I didn't let myself think about it, I had to believe that I remembered
where the elevator was. My head was too fried to think rationally.
We ran down the hall, Al close behind us, spraying bullets as he went. I dreaded running into
any of the alien doctors. They could freeze you with a thought. They could make you shoot
yourself in the head with their will dominating your control over your own body. I had seen
them make soldiers who were caught talking to the 'criminally insane' do that exact thing.
It wasn't an alien doctor that we ran into.
We found the elevator and it did require a special identification code be punched into it. I let
David puzzle over it and watched the far hallway. Al was guarding the way we had come and
he would let out a spray of machine gun fire anytime anyone so much as poked a finger
around the hall corner. I wondered how much ammo they had brought and then blocked the
thought.
A lone figure in a white lab coat came tearing around the corner towards us. He had no gun,
no way to defend himself and I recognized him by his green eyes and black hair. I held up the
gun to be level with his head.
No, don't, I'm not armed! I won't say a word, I swear, he held up his hands to show he was
unarmed.
Don't worry, you'll feel much better soon, I replied and shot him in the head. His brains
sprayed across the hallway along with a great deal of blood. I smiled softly, There, I bet
you're feeling better already.
David glanced at me and then back to the panel. He was kind enough to let my revenge be
my own concern. Al hollered at us, They're massing, I think they've got some sort of big
weapon with them and it's only a matter of time before they send some gas at us if we keep
them at bay any longer.
The pad lit up green and I heard the jolt of the elevator mechanism working. I pulled off the
doctor's pants and tucked my gown into it and pulled his lab jacket off as well. It was stained
red at the collar but my hair covered that well enough. I grabbed his shoes and socks as the
elevator doors opened.
Now, Al! We're going up! David called.
We got into the elevator. Whatever David had done to the circuit panel it started to bump and
grind upward when he hit 'B' for basement. Al was anxiously checking his guns and
reloading. The doors would open soon, what would we find? A whole team of soldiers with

their guns trained on us?

David held me, Almost out, darling, almost out. He kissed my hair. I didn't cry. I was limp. I
had been so resigned to my death that I didn't know how to react to life and hope anymore.
He looked me in the eyes. I wondered if he knew.
Are you okay? David asked.
I don't know, I replied. It was the only answer I could give. He held me tightly to him.
I wondered if it had been too much then, I wondered if I was broken. A part of me
straightened. It was low and deep at the very base of my spine. A desire to not let them have
broken me. A desire to live. I knew Al, of course I did. We had worked missions together.
We'd had each other's backs on more than one occasion. He had a sense of joy and humor to
him that was like a young boy's love of life.
Al, do you have a spare knife or a gun? I asked.
I've got this knife, He offered a long bladed knife to me and I took it in its sheath and put it
through the belt of the pants I had stolen. It was shorter than a sword but longer than a
kitchen knife and much better than hand to hand combat.
I tossed my hair back and raised my head, I would live. Fuck them if they thought they had
broken me. I saw David and Al exchange a nod. The doors to the elevator opened: it was a
parkade. More importantly, it was an empty parkade.
Do you remember where we parked, David? Al asked with a smirk.
That car there looks like a car I could have parked, David replied pointing at a jaguar.
I would have thought we would have come in something with four wheel drive, Al replied, but
we were already moving towards the car David had picked out. He was only a minute to open
the driver's lock and unlock the rest of the doors and get the engine going. David had a gift for
those sorts of things.
I would imagine we would too, but this will do for the road to town, we'll have to get through
chain link fencing if we go cross country on base. After that we'll find our way.
Al nodded, New cars are good.
The two men climbed in the front seat, I sat in the back, trying to look as much like a doctor as
I could. Just a doctor being escorted from the base, nothing to see here. I saw David's gun
was by his left hand. We pulled up to the gate to the parkade and David flashed his
identification. The guy was distracted and barely looked twice before opening the rolling metal
barricade that kept us in.
Then.

We were in the fresh air. The desert sun beating down on us while we drove with a plume of
dust behind us rising up like a tail on a dragon. David glanced in the rear view mirror and met
my eyes, One more security point to pass through then we're off base. We aren't out of the
woods yet, we won't be until we can get out of the country ideally.
I could see the checkpoint ahead of us. A chain link gate had to be opened by the guard in the
guard house before we could make it out, if a full out alert had been called the gate wouldn't
be open for anyone. I tried to remember to breathe.
We pulled up to the little station. It had tinted windows and was no doubt air conditioned or
the soldier manning it would cook in the desert heat. We pulled up to the window. I knew right
away that something felt wrong. We had pulled up to the station in a way so that I was at an
angle to see and be seen as soon as the soldier opened the window to look at David's fake
Id. I looked at my hands, still covered in blood. They were criminals. He had deserved to die.
Someone had been criminally insane: Anyone who worked in level seven, but I remembered
him begging, raising his hands, saying, 'Please, I'm unarmed.'
I wondered if I could have shot a man in cold blood before this had happened.
The window opened and I saw the soldier who had asked me where my family had come
from. He had been moved to guard duty it seemed, not killed or transferred after all. He
looked from the id to David, Hey, why are you driving General Lemmer's Jag? He asked.
David cocked his head, This baby's all mine, the general and I must have similar tastes.
Then my eyes locked with the soldiers and he raised a finger to point at me, Wait a minute, I
know her- I know you-
David raised his gun and shot the soldier with efficient accuracy. He got out of the car and
reached inside the guard station to punch the button to open the gate, That wasn't so bad, at
least we know they haven't called out a general alert. We might still make it out of this alive.
Al laughed but all I could see was the soldier pointing at me, his eyes wide with recognition.
Had he been instrumental in David finding me? Had he helped rescue me only to be killed for
his pains? Or was his hand already on an alarm button?
David tore through the gate as soon as it opened and then put the Jaguar through its paces
as he drove it full throttle through the desert.
I thought of the stack of books the soldier had brought me. I thought of the green eyed doctor
who had lied and said I'd feel better soon,' begging for his life.
As I thought these thoughts I felt something move inside of me. I put my hand across the taut
line where the stolen pants covered my womb. Yes, something moving.
I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes. Life wouldn't ever be what it had
been. Level seven gets made into the even the sugar and spice and everything nice that little
girls are made of.