Free The Ghost of Ben Hargrove by Heather Brewer Page B

squeeze.
    Footsteps in the hall. Maybe fifteen feet or so away, and headed in my direction. They sound familiar, leather-heeled loafers on a tile floor, and I know that they belong to the hand that appears in my door seven times per cycle. Three times to present me with food. Three more times to collect the trays. Once to present me with pills. The Hand, as I think of him, never speaks, never argues, never judges. He simply presents me with these options, and then he disappears again. I tried speaking to the Hand on many occasions, but he refused to respond. Or perhaps he couldn’t. Is he mute? Is he deaf? Or is he just cruel, resigning me to my lonely fate inside these four walls? I have no way of knowing, and with every cycle I spend locked inside my strange cage, I grow more and more despondent.
    The footsteps get louder with approach, but fall silent when their owner stops just outside my door. The slot opens and the hand appears, this time holding a rectangular dining tray divided into little compartments. Without hesitation, I move from my bed and pad to the door, shocked into alertness when my bare feet hit the cold concrete floor. I’m dressed in scrubs—dark blue, the only color in the palette of grays that surround me. I bend at the waist and try to peer through the slot, to get a look at whoever and whatever is on the other side, but I can’t see anything. Only darkness. With a sigh, I take the tray from the Hand, and say, “Thank you.”
    As always, I receive no response. No verbal response, anyway. The Hand slides back through the slot and the slot closes. Once again, I am alone.
    For a change of pace, I sit cross-legged on the floor beside the door and balance the tray on my knees. Normally, I sit on the bed to eat, but eating toast in bed means sleeping on crumbs, which only makes it weirder when I wake up to find myself in pristine, clean sheets. So I sit on the cold floor and look over what first meal has brought me today. In the top left corner of the tray, beside the two pieces of white toast, are two butter packets. In the top right corner is a small cardboard carton of 2 percent milk. The three compartments that make up the rest of the tray hold scrambled eggs, two pieces of crispy bacon, and a small bunch of green grapes. A sigh escapes me. Every cycle it’s the same. First meal consists of exactly what sits on my tray now. Second meal will be a bottle of water; a crisp, red apple; and a turkey sandwich with cheese, lettuce, and mustard. Third meal will be another bottle of water, a slice of roast beef, a side dish medley of potatoes and carrots, and a small plastic tub of tapioca pudding for dessert.
    Roast beef and tapioca—yet I am offered no utensils to eat with. Perhaps it amuses them, my captors, to treat me like an animal in this way. Perhaps that’s all I am to them.
    After third meal I will be offered more water and two pills. When I refuse the pills, which I always do, I will be refused the water. The Hand will simply take them away again without explanation. I know it’s strange, but I want to trust the Hand. And I’m dying to know what those white pills do. I just can’t bring myself to trust anyone who is affiliated with whoever—whatever—brought me here. I suppose my captors could drug my food—and maybe they do; maybe that’s what causes my memory to be so scattered—but I get the strong feeling they don’t. It’s as if they want me to choose the pills, rather than force the pills on me.
    They are patient, my captors. So I must be patient, too.
    I pluck a grape from the bunch and pop it into my mouth, then pause. Something is different. Nothing is ever different in this place, but now something is and it sends my heart racing.
    Something white and square is lying beneath the bunch of grapes.
    I try to act casual, no different, in case they really are watching. After chewing my grape and swallowing, I move on to the