Figment - Jace Cameron. Страница 10

I try to rip apart a piece of the plastic bag so I can wrap it around my feet and body. But the bag isn't elastic enough. Of course not. It's durable enough to hold a dead person inside. Why would it cut easily?

I tilt my head. The cold room doesn't offer any visible solutions. It's a huge, rectangular room, reminding me of the corridor in the underground ward in the asylum. I take a long, cold breath to get some oxygen into my head. It hurts, but I need it to think clearer.

The floor is marble all around. The walls are buried behind the endless metallic drawers with corpses inside. There are only three bulbs in the entire place. One is hanging over my head, another a few meters away, and the third is a bit too far. I can't see it—I am too numb to walk that far.

The three bulbs are slightly shaking, as if huffed and puffed by an invisible wind.

Closing my eyes and clenching my teeth, I try not to think about the dead all around me. Thanks to the dim light, I can pretend they don't exist, like all the scary things in the night we dismiss.

The cold attacks my feet again, chilling through my spine. It's getting harder to force my eyelids open.

Seriously, I am not dead. Am I? The tag is some kind of a morbid joke. Right?

I miss the madness of my Tiger Lily. She would have spat some quirky words at me. She would have accused me of being mad and useless, but she would have also hinted to some solution.

I keep walking as fast as I can in the room to get warmth into my body. I am actually limping now. It reminds me of the Pillar's Caucus Race; walking fast inside the morgue, knowing it will get me nowhere.

Where the heck is the door?

I can't find it.

Please tell me I am not mad.

Mad or dead, which is which, and does it really make a difference?

Panting, I stare at the few tables next to me. They are lined with plastic bags of the corpses. Those I stopped by are different. The bags are all labeled with chalk on the surface: Watermelon Murders.

This is what I am here for. Cold or no cold, I have to examine the corpses.

Still tapping my feet to the cold ground, it finally occurs to me to check my jeans pocket for my mobile phone. I guess I was too panicked to look earlier—isolated living in the asylum does this too you; calling someone for help isn't the usual reaction for a person with a Certificate of Insanity.

I find the mobile and pull it out. I am surprised there is a signal inside the morgue. Thank God. With numb fingers, I dial the only number on my contacts.

Beep. Beep.

No one picks up.

I hate those beeps.

My face reddens when the call ends. Some programmed woman's voice tells me that no one is picking up, that I should try later.

"He has to pick up!" I scream at her

"Well, sweetie. Let's try again," the woman chirps.

I almost throw away the phone, shocked by the woman's response. Isn't this supposed to be prerecorded?

But then I succumb to the madness, which means basically ignoring it and not giving it much thought. I push the button again, almost hurting my forefinger.

The Pillar has to pick up, or is he a figment of my imagination, too?

Finally, someone picks up and says, "Carroll's Cause for the Criminally Cuckoo. How can I help you today?"

Chapter 12

It takes me a moment to realize this is the Pillar's cool, nonchalant, and all-mocking voice.

Once I am about to fire all anger at him, he interrupts me, munching on food. It's not that nom nom nom sound. It's brauch brauch brauch, deliberately provoking me. "Hello," he says. "Who's this?"

"It's me, Alice!" I growl, and try to furrow my brow against the cold. I can't say my face went red, as it is still numb. I start tapping my feet against the cold floor again.

"Alice," he munches. "From Wonderland," he welcomes me, slowly sipping a drink from a straw. "Did you inspect the corpses yet?"

"Not yet." I am too chilled, too little blood flowing in my veins, a bit too numb to fire back or scream. "It's too cold." I rub my sides.

"Dead people usually are." He pops open a bag of snacks.

"I'm not joking. I am cold and will freeze in here." I begin to walk around again, looking for some kind of shoes again. "I know the toe tag is your doing; a sick prank from a sick mind."

"Toe tag?" More sucking and slurping. Krrr krawww.

"The one that says I died in a bus accident." I keep looking for something for warmth. A mortician must have left a coat behind or something.

The Pillar stops munching. "No? I don't know anything about that. I admit I sedated you in the school, but that was for the greater good. All in Britain's name."

"Then who did that to me?" Still looking for shoes, I don't have the nerve to argue about him sedating me now.

"My chauffeur sneaked you into the morgue as a corpse. It was the only way we could surpass the security system. He must have added a toe tag, but he never told me he'd write you died in a bus accident."

"I don't believe you," I say. "And I'm tired of your games." I rummage through a few weird-looking instruments on a table, metallic, scissor-like cutters. I can't even begin to think what they do with them. "Get me out of here before I freeze to death."

"You can't get out before approximately thirty minutes." The Pillar starts munching again. "A mortician will pick up your corpse after she receives a fake call from my chauffeur informing her your corpse has been misplaced, so we can get you out again. That's the plan."

"I will freeze to death in here. I need shoes and a coat."

"Why is that a problem?"

"The problem is I can't find any." I try my best to express my anger. The tightness of my face doesn't help much.

"If I were you, I'd roll out a corpse from the infinite drawers and fetch me a dead woman's shoe." He stops munching again, as if waiting for my reaction to his suggestion.

I don't hesitate. I walk back to the drawers, pull one out. The steel drawer is much heavier than I'd expected.

The corpse's smell isn't that bad. Unlike the corpses on the table, the ones in the drawers have been examined and cleaned. It's the corpse's sight that imposes a dreadful atmosphere upon me.

Dead or mad, what would it be? I realize I'd prefer being mad.

"Alice?" I hear him on the phone's speaker, but ignore him. I have to do this. It's just borrowing a dead man's shoe. We need to look out for each other, don't we, the living and the dead?

But then I am hit with an imaginary hammer on my head when I realize the corpses in the drawers don't have their clothes on. I let out another angry growl.

"No shoes?" the Pillar mocks me.

Too weak to even talk, I close my eyes, trying to argue with reason. Why is he doing this to me?

"To spare your breath, you'll not find clothes in the drawers," he says. "Corpses in the drawers had their autopsies already. You need to try the bags on the metallic roller beds. Those are the fresh ones. Yummy!" He bites into what I think is a greasy hamburger.

I walk silently to one of the death bags, not those marked with Watermelon Murders, as I don't want to mess with evidence.

I pull the zipper open only to realize the one I chose is a man's corpse. What can I say? I am picky. I want a woman's shoe, and I want it my size.

I zip the bag and try the one next to it. A woman.