Anamnesis: A Novel (16 page)
Read Anamnesis: A Novel Online
Authors: Eloise J. Knapp
“I left early today and said I was sick,
so I can call out tomorrow with no questions asked. We go first thing in the
morning.” She glanced at my jacket on the counter, then at me. “Can you go back
to your apartment?”
“I’m sure I’ll be okay for tonight. I
should probably pack a few things and be ready to bail out if I need to.”
It was an outright lie, but I didn’t want
to impose on her. The thought of staying at Olivia’s place made me feel
uncomfortable even though I bet she’d agree to it if I asked. I’d spent my fair
share sleeping under overpasses and in parks. I’d be okay.
“Great. I’ll pick you up outside of your
apartment around 9:00am and we’ll head over.” The timer beeped. “But first, we
eat.”
My neck and back were stiff. The wound on
my shoulder ached. After Olivia dropped me off at my apartment the previous
night, I gathered up clothes, blankets, what drugs I had left, and anything
else that fit in my one duffel bag. I’d been ready for a gun fight the entire
time and was almost let down when no one showed up to take me out. I went to
the convention center park, a quiet place with tons of nooks and crannies to
sleep in. I traded an oxy for a good sleeping spot in a service shed and got
two hours of sleep at best. Between the concrete and the near freezing
temperatures, it was one of the worst nights I’d had in a while. That said a
lot.
It would’ve been more convenient if I told
her to pick me up at the park, but I didn’t want to scare Olivia. After I woke
up, I made the trek back to my apartment. When she picked me up I stashed my
bag in her trunk. She looked as rested and well dressed as ever.
We drove into a part of Seattle I rarely
ventured to anymore. The entire neighborhood was in shambles. Nearby office
buildings stood empty with plywood boards over their windows and vandalized
"do not trespass" signs plastered on every fence and entrance. This
area had gone to hell years ago. It was overrun with homeless and drug addicts,
or anyone looking to evade the police for a while. I’d been there before to
collect drug money or teach someone a lesson. I'd passed the very building a
dozen times and never thought twice about it. Another gang had claimed the
territory recently and I hadn’t been back since.
And all that time, it likely held the
secrets to my past. The universe had a sick sense of humor. Part of me
appreciated it. The other gave it the finger. I wondered what my fucking
self-help books would think about that.
“Is it even safe? It looks really beat
up,” Olivia said, drawing my attention from my philosophical thoughts.
"We'll be fine. Come on, let's get in
there." I crossed the empty parking lot to the front doors. Olivia
followed quickly behind me, her sneakered feet slapping against the concrete.
The crowbar she brought from her car looked out of place in her hands. It was
shiny without any signs of use.
The door had a chain around the handles with
a rusted padlock that had already been cut once and hung just by its crook on
the chains. I pulled the chains free and they clattered to the ground.
When I stepped in, I knew right away that the
building had guests recently. The scent of urine soaked into concrete assaulted
me with a hefty smack, smelling humid and intense despite the cold. The black
and white checkered floor was littered with beer cans, cigarette butts, and the
occasional used needle. Some of it looked fresh, only just discarded. And we
were only in the lobby.
Having learned my lesson at Chuck’s, I
withdrew my gun. I wasn’t taking any risks. Olivia didn’t like the gun, I was
certain—I saw the look of disdain on her face—but it was necessary. She reached
into her pocket and took out a flashlight she brought from the car.
It was dim inside the building. Little
light filtered through the cracks between the boarded windows. The interior
stretched back past the lobby into a hallway. To the right were open elevators,
gaping black and empty. A stairwell door stood adjacent to them.
"This place is huge. Where do we even
start?" Her voice echoed. Something shifted down the hallway. A chair
sliding, I figured. Or an animal scurrying away? No other sounds followed. It
worried me, but I let it go.
I paced around the lobby and quickly found
what I was looking for. Behind a dusty plastic plant against the wall, a sign
had fallen. I used the edge of my jacket sleeve to wipe away the grime. It laid
out each of the floors. D.P. Pharmaceutical Industries held the entire third
floor. I took the lead and went up the stairwell by the elevator. Olivia lit
the way behind me, making my shadow tall and jumpy as we ascended. In the
closed space the smell was even worse. I wanted to cover my mouth but I kept my
grip on the gun and my gaze ahead.
I’d lost my breath by the time we reached the
second story but Olivia was fine, toting her crowbar and looking around
eagerly. The door to the lobby of the third floor was halfway off its hinges
and left a small triangle of space underneath. I holstered the gun for a moment
to lift it up for Olivia to go under, then followed.
The third story wasn’t as destroyed as
downstairs. Maybe others weren’t keen on going all the way up here either. Not
that there weren’t signs of vandalism. Food garbage littered the floor and
graffiti was sprayed across the wall separating the elevator from D.P. A giant
floor to ceiling glass window was shattered to the right, letting in ample
sunlight. There was water damage and tufts of moss growing near it.
“It’s funny, when I thought of this place
I pictured a big business tower about a hundred floors high made of steel and
glass. Lightning crackling overhead.” Olivia made that small
hmph
noise.
“Not this. There’s something terribly anti-climactic about it.”
“I’d rather deal with this than that. More
manageable.”
We walked around a large reception desk
built into the ground in front of two wooden double doors. These were padlocked
and, unlike the entrance to the building, still secure. There were four loops
of chain around the handles in addition to two locks. The door was scratched
and beat up around the handles. It looked like someone tried to get in before
with no luck.
“You didn’t happen to bring a lock cutter
too, did you?” I joked as I inspected the door. The bottom right side of it,
closest to the window, was waterlogged and rotting. “I think this might give.
Hand me the crowbar.”
I took the offered crowbar and gave the
door a few test hits. Soggy wood flung off in shards. The door was weak there.
If I could get a big enough hole, we could crawl through. I hit it a few more
times until it gave, then used the pry end of the crowbar to work off larger
chunks. By the time I was done there was a hole just over two feet around.
I got onto my hands and knees and peered
into the room. Dozens of cubicles dotted a bright room, lit by skylights evenly
spaced every five feet above. There was a thick coating of dust on all
surfaces, including the linoleum floor in front of me. Inside, there were fewer
signs of vandalism.
My aching body protested as I got onto my
belly and shimmied through the hole. Dust came up around me and elicited a few
sneezes. Once on the other side, I waited for any signs of life.
“Looks good in here. Come on through.”
Olivia grumbled, though I’m not sure what
she said. She pulled herself through the hole and was on her feet in an
instant, dusting off her jacket. One side of her face was smudged with dirt
where it had pressed against the floor.
“Let’s walk around first and get a feel
for the place. Then we’ll start digging,” she suggested.
“Split up or stay together?”
I caught her eyes flicker to my shoulder.
Maybe my close call had her rethinking our safety, too. “Might as well stay
together.”
We looped around the cubicles first. It
reminded me of a documentary on Chernobyl that Donovan made me watch while we
were strung out on cocaine. Everything left exactly the way it was, toys and
school things set down never to be picked up again. A ghost town. This place
was similar; there were family photos on desks, comic strips. Desk chairs with
musky cushions, dull mugs who hadn’t seen coffee in a nearly a decade. There
were no computers or phones left behind. The only thing that ruined the image
was the garbage strewn about.
The cubicles were in the center of a U-shaped
configuration with doors spread along the rest of the walls. Olivia and I
peeked into each one and found personal offices. Two doors led to small labs,
one to a room full of cages, and another two were packed with filing cabinets and
cardboard storage boxes.
“If we’re going to find anything, I bet it
will be here,” Olivia said as she entered one of the storage rooms. She tugged
a cabinet drawer. “Locked though. Think we can get them open?”
“We’re in it now. No going back.”
The cabinets in the room had dates on each
drawer. I found one that was dated two years before I began my trials, and
jimmied it open. Inside were undamaged folders organized by the month. I pulled
out January and set it on top of the cabinet, leaning it towards the window. It
was all numbers for a mood stabilizing drug. I found another folder for a sex
enhancer. The third folder was for Whiteout, the words ‘Working Title’ in
parentheses next to it.
Percentages of test subjects who
experienced side effects of Whiteout. 100% anxiety, 14% nausea. The list went
on and on. There were summaries under each statistic outlining the severity of
the side effects. It was interesting, but not useful. The entire cabinet was
organized by year. I bet each would have more of these. I went through and
broke open each one.
I took satisfaction in knowing for certain
D.P. created Whiteout. This is where it started. Now we knew for sure.
“Hand me that, I want to look, too.”
Olivia took the crowbar and pried open a drawer of her own. She pulled out
stacks of folders and soon we were lost in reading.
“You find anything?” I asked Olivia as I
scanned statistics. I’d found a folder of stats from my first year of testing.
Even though nothing pointed to me directly, I was part of those numbers. I
wondered if I was part of the remaining 4% who experienced nausea. I knew I was
part of the 89% who experienced violence when tapering off.
“Kind of. These are all personal files of
test subjects. Their basic information.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t shred all
this.”
Olivia hefted a stack of folders out of
her cabinet and set them on the ground. “I’m not. If the building was seized
like that article said, it makes sense. The bank didn’t get around to clearing
it out, and there you have it.”
I moved on to a stack of filing boxes next
to the cabinets. The boxes were taped shut. I peeled up the tape and shuffled
through them. They were all financial reports. Nothing I cared about. Again, I
went through each box just in case something tricky had slipped in. By the time
I was done, my vision was blurred with numbers.
That’s when I realized Olivia hadn’t
spoken or moved in minutes. “What’s up? Did you find something?”
“Yes. I suppose it’s nothing new. It’s
just…” she handed me a folder. The tab read
William Grigg
in neat
capital handwriting. “I found yours. I didn’t look at it.”
I cleared my throat and took the folder.
“Thanks.”
“Do you need a minute?”
I waved her away. “No, it’s fine. Keep
going through files. We need to finish up in here and hit the other room.”
Before I even opened the folder I made a
deal with myself; there was nothing in there that would change what I wanted.
Nothing in there would stop me from finding out who was behind Whiteout and
what happened to me. William Grigg was, as far as I was concerned, a different
person. I might have some of his fragmented childhood memories, but I was not
him. Not anymore.
Whatever I found was a fact. That’s it.
I came face to face with that other
version of me when I opened the folder. I stood unsmiling against a white wall.
My face was waxy and there were dark circles under bloodshot eyes. My blackish
hair was matted and greasy. The photo was so different from the one I found of
me and the mysterious Sarah woman. I had no doubt the image with Sarah came
long before this one.
Beneath the photo was a hefty stack of
papers. The first set was a human trial contract and disclaimer that was a
quarter inch thick with nothing but fine print. As I flicked through it I saw
the initials W.G. on each page and a matching signature throughout. There was
no question; I’d agreed to the trials. I did submit myself voluntarily. My
parents had said that much in the missing person report.
Under that was a profile of me, similar to
the missing person report but much more detailed. This had my blood type, past
medical issues, and vaccinations. There was a personal history outlining
confrontations I had at school, what subjects I had aptitude for. Near the end
was a drug history. It said I started exploring marijuana and barbiturates in middle
school, then moved on to painkillers by the beginning of high school. Near the
end of high school I tried heroin at a party and got hooked.
The “current” status report said I had
been addicted to heroin for almost a year. My parents and girlfriend gave me an
ultimatum to get sober or they’d abandon me. My intent of going into the trial
was to get some cash and hopefully become addiction-free.
There was a list of items I surrendered
upon entering the trial. Clothing, shoes, wallet, an unused needle, cell phone.
A photo. It had to be the one of me and Sarah B. What else would it have been?
The question was, how did I manage to get it back and hold on to it during
those four years?
