The Review

[jack_babalon]

When they finally arrived at his cubicle to escort him to the Central Offices of Tower Incorporated (LLC), they did so precisely five minutes before his lunch break and while outfitted in a pair of the company's standard issue Personell-Retrieval Hazmat Suits.

These suits were worn exclusively by the mysterious Security Executives of Tower Incorporated whenever they were dispatched from the Central Offices to retrieve an employee for compulsory participation in the arcane ceremonies of those shadowy beings known only as the Macro Managers (ceremonies including, but not limited to - the Ritual of the Annual Review, the Twelve Blood Rites of Sacrificial Downsizing, the submitting of a urine sample to HR's council of seers who can prognosticate a prospective employee's productivity by sifting through their pee with a wand of pure Weeping Oak... then of course there is the burning alive of one random temp worker in a giant wicker-man stuffed with vacation requests at the company picnic).

The unique feature of the P-RHS though was that it was designed to render the wearer with the appearance of a large, white bunny rabbit (one admitedly who seemed to be ready to engage in some unspecified form of chemical warfare at a moments notice). As such each suit was coated with a fine layer of white velvet fur over the airtight plastic surface, equipped with a cotton tail that hung off the ass with all the pomp of a Christmas ornament and had two fur trimmed floppy rabbit ears that often dangled over the mirrored visor of the suits black rubber gas mask. The reasoning for the P-RHS's lapinesque appearance came from the millions of dollars Tower Inc. spent on psychological profiles, test markets and the culling of opinions from the captive hordes of Focus Groups that the company kept imprisoned in an abandoned mall in central Wisconsin. What they discovered from this research was an alarming propensity for most Americans (those between the ages of 18 and 55 with a minimum income of 18,000 a year especially) to be susceptible to the orders of authority figures when said figures are dressed in biological containment suits or conversely, as large white bunny rabbits.

It was the genius of Tower Inc to meld these two contradictory visages into an alchemical marriage of pure, unquestionable autocracy.

However it has never been clearly understood, despite the astronomical costs in tabulating this information, why bunny rabbits in particular and not some other animal in general?


This was the very question Gabriel asked himself as he swiveled in his chair to glance up at the two pairs of gas-masks who were peering down at him over the wall of his cubicle, their corrugated oxygen tubes dangling over his thumbtacked calendar and their visors reflecting back at him his rather puzzled expression. He had of course heard the stories of the strange rabbit men as well as the company picnics that reeked of burning flesh, but dismissed them as nothing more than breakroom rumors designed to give the 'new guy' first day jitters. Of course the funny thing about rumors has always been that sometimes they are absolutely true.

"Psssshhhh-Gabriel Alephonso..." the gas mask on the left spoke.

"Psssshhhh-You are to come with us please" the gas mask on the right continued brushing a stray rabbit ear out of his face.

"Yeah, um... well it's my lunch break fella's..." Gabriel mumbled weakly, offering up his microwave dinner between his hands as both proof of his statement and as a small shield to hide behind.

"Psssshhh- you are to come with us immediately..." the left mask shook his head at Gabriel.

"Pssshhhh- and you are to leave your 'Big Billy's Gut Gourmet' dinner behind!" the right jabbed a black rubber finger menacingly at the openly startled employee's lunch.

"But it's 'Big Billy's Big Sexy Chicken'!" Gabriel protested having suffered his morning labors in silence with little reward to the day besides the satisfaction that came with processed deep fried meat and artifically flavored mashed 'taters.

"Pssshhhh- Irrelevant!" the Security Exec's crackle in unison, "You will come with us now!"

Gabriel sighed, shrugged helplessly, rose from his seat, signed off on his keyboard, reluctantly layed the dinner down on the corner of his desk knowing full well it would be gone within minutes of his departure and began to follow the two men in silence. He wasn't sure why he was doing any of this really. There was a burning instinct to run for his life yet he felt compelled somehow by the dangling bunny ears and the muffled breathing of the suits oxygen tube to follow the men without question.

They led him through the byzantine maze of the Cube Farm, parading him around so all his coworkers got a good look at him in a sort of convoluted perp walk. When each of Gabriel's co-workers were made to shudder in the wake of their procession, the Security Exec's then escorted him through a labyrinth of hidden corridors that were accesible only by a secret door that was hidden behind a perpetually broken vending machine in the break room. After wandering, what was to all appearances, aimlessly through these transterranean corridors for the better part of an hour the three men stepped out of a small wooden closet located in the corner of his supervisors office.

Gabriel looked around cautiously, saw that the place was empty and turned to ask one of the gas-masks something vague and poorly phrased, before being directed to take a seat in front of the broad mahogony desk in the leather office chair. Behind the desk was a framed print of Turner's The Slave Ship - the skeletal vessel framed against a blood soaked sky, the crashing of cast iron waves, seagreen monster fish hunting the drowning, the manacled hands reaching upwards from the surface of their watery graves... though he wasn't moving he seemed to be getting closer to the painting, that or it had started to grow in front of him... he no sooner noticed this effect when he began to hear the sounds of the wind slashing the waves, then the barking of a flock of seagulls overheard, then the screams started gurgling all around him...

...the door slammed behind Gabriel and he was startled out of his trance. He leaned forward and craned his head back. There was a woman of indeterminable age, with a very stylish haircut adorning a very sensible beige business suit standing in the doorway. The woman clutched to her chest a manilla envelope and walked over towards Gabriel with a drifting, somnabulists gait. She took a seat behind the desk in front of him and straightened her glasses. It was then that Gabriel noticed the woman had her eyes closed and the baby-blue mascara dappled lids were flickering with intense REM sleep.

"Crzzzzhhhh....You know why you're here Mister Alephonso?" the woman spoke with a gravely, almost lyrical masculine voice that was being broadcasted out of an old radio speaker that was somehow broadcasting out of her throat.

"Excuse me?" Gabriel asked with a confused whisper that he thought was going to sound louder.

The woman's head rolls along the pivot of her neck, a slight snore can be heard wafting through the flare of her nostrils. Gabriel had had enough and got up to leave but was promptly forced back down into the chair by a rubber grip that pinched into his shoulder. The woman lifted her head up, her eyelids still twitching behind the magnification of her oval glasses and repeated the question.

"No... no I do not, ma'am!"

The woman lifted her arms with a tug of unseen strings to beckon for one of the bunny men, who stepped to her side and handed her a spiral notebook.

"Do you recognize this?" the woman with another man's voice demanded waving the notebook around blindly.

"Yeahhhh..." Gabriel answered recognizing the Dream Journal he kept on his night stand at home.

The woman tossed the book dismissively across the desk between them. Gabriel looked at it with a detached curiosity before lifting his eyes back towards her.

"Look lady, mister, who or whatever you are..." Gabriel began to get up again but thought better of it despite his mounting outrage, "you have no right to be going through my stuff like that!"

"Crrzzzzhhhh... In fact we do, Mister Alephonso" the woman interrupted casually, her head drifting backwards before bolting forward again in blind attention, "You gave us clearance to all written reports (business, personal and spiritual) when you signed onto our health care plan".

One of the rabbit men leans forward at this point handing Gabriel the standard Control Heath Care Form he signed some five years ago. Jack looks it over, finding his signature scribbled under a row of meaningless legalese filled with ominous terms such as '...psychic pain threshold...', '...neural abnegation...' and '...cerebral microphone implant protocols: Alpha through Epsilon...' before having the paperwork snatched out of his hands by the other rabbit man.

"Crrrzzzsss.. So, now that we've cleared that up maybe you'd like to explain to us the dream you had on the morning of..." the woman's words suddenly become drowned out in a crackling snarl of static that breaks suddenly into a broadcast of a local college football game before squealching into a series of frequency spikes that settle back on her words, "... June, 23rd...2005!"

Gabriel shakes his head in a quick shiver - "How am I s'posed to remember what I wrote some three years ago?"

"Yes, sadly we are currently back logged on our full spectrum employee surveilance and as such haven't had a chance to review your records until recently..." the woman picks up the notebook, flips through the pages and folds it open to a page bearing the date in question, "but still we must all do our part to get back on track. So please read for us the journal entry, mister Alephonso... and do so with a deep baritone or a German affectation if you don't mind."

"As a matter of fact I do!" Gabriel protested and began to read the designated entry defiantly in his own (vaguely nasally) voice -

June 23rd, 2005 -

I was walking through a forest looking for something important that I had both lost and forgotten. All I can remember of the object was was the urgency with which finding it held over me. A thick mist clung to the air dispersing itself in the light the way a dye might in a glass of water, the effect was such that I wasn't sure whether night was falling or ending. I became aware that there was something following me in the underbrush of the forest, occasionally I would sense its stare burrowing into me and I would turn around quickly only to catch a blur vanishing out of the corner of my eye. Whatever it was it filled me with both an unshakable dread and a inexpicable sadness. Still I knew so long as I kept searching it could not harm me.

Eventually I came to a clearing and found my old room from back when I was teenager still living with my folks in Clayton... or rather I had found its contents emptied out and rearranged here in the exact layout I once had it layed out: There was the beaten up drafting table my dad found on his way home from work (by 'work' I mean the bar) that ended up as my writing desk sitting half buried in the mud - thick purple vines had intwined themselves up the legs and the lamp attached to the tables edge, sprouting strange crimson blooms along its length. A gallery of Slayer and Iron Maiden posters hung thumbtacked to the trunks of black, ravaged trees. My dresser was half-buried in dry mud - the drawers pulled open and I could make out a nest of hand sized, featherless albino birds squirming around my socks and boxers -I noticed then that none of them had eyes but they seemed to have sensed me looming over them and began releasing this awful screach in alarm. The hand me down bookshelf stood by a clearing, the titles on the spines of the books faded and translucent dragonflies flitted around the shelves protectively. Finally I noticed my bed sitting up on a slight mound. A sheet of a phosphorescent blue moss had covered the matress, from which sprouted violet mushrooms peppered with vibrant pink spots across their caps. A swarm of fat bodied bugs that resembled both cockroaches and armadillos scurried around the minature mushroom jungle.

I almost felt myself wake up at this point, a dim awareness passed that I was dreaming but was silenced when I noticed the single flower that had grown in the center of the bed. It resembled a sort of deep crimson lily whose petals faded into a deep purple. As soon as I saw this flower I immediately became aware of its scent - a sort of musk that resembled sweat masked with a lingering stink of burnt syrup. This is, as far as I recall, the only time I've ever been aware of an odor in a dream. The scent of it intoxicated me. I could feel my heart begin to race with a nervous excitement, my skin was flushed with an immense heat that made my clothes itch against my flesh. I became agitated. I began pacing around the bed, peeling my shirt off, then my shoes, then my pants, stripping down in each pass around the bed, until I was on all fours and still this god awful heat rippled out of me. I began rolling in the earth, wiggling on my back until I realized the presence of an enormous hunger well inside me. I crawled along my belly up the edge of the bed, the armadillo-roaches running up my arms and thighs and the mushrooms crushed under the weight of my progress, until I was face to face with the odd flower. I began sniffing it again, waves of giddiness over coming me with each fresh breath which would satiate then reignite the hunger inside. It was then that I reached over and spread the petals apart with the flats of my thumbs to reveal the stalk of the flowers stigma. The scent was overwhelming now - almost viscous, sending a red glaze over my vision. It was then that I began lightly licking the tip of the stigma with my tongue. The taste of which was a subtle blend of honey and seawater. As I licked I could feel the filament stems begin to weave themselve along my cheeks, my body began to sink into the moss, the purple vines I mentioned earlier weaved themselves around my wrists and ankles but it didn't matter, I could feel the flower tremble beneath the lapping of my tongue and a groan of a untuned viola started weeping with a terrible pleasure in my ear. At one point the petals started to flutter and from the depths of its bloom a cascade of tiny milk white spiders poured out across my face...

I wanted to scream, to break away, but I was mesmerized by the taste of the flower and did not move even as the hive of spiders began to cover me in strands of webbing, covering me in a pearl encrusted cocoon that left only the bottom of my jaw free to continue working the flower over...

... at some point I couldn't taste it anymore. The odor that had transfixed me was gone and replaced with an viscous stink of rotting peaches. I struggled against the confines of the pearl cocoon and soon was able to crack through its brittle shell.

But I wasn't myself anymore. I had knew now that I had become the thing, the beast, that had been following me earlier in silence. I stepped out of my body at that point, stepped off the bed to take in the creature that I had become. I watched in silence as it stood there on the bed on all fours, then it looked over at me with nothing of my face but it's eyes and it pulled back a taut smile across its nuzzle, before turning back to bite into the flower and swallow it whole.

At which point I woke up and spent the following hour in the shower trying to wash the last memories of the stink off me...."

At this point Gabriel closes his dream journal and places it back on the desk. The woman was still asleep, though with her hands folded neatly on top of each other and staring at him with closed eyes.

"So?" Gabriel asks long after the silence sailed past uncomfortable.

"Crsssshhhh... so?" the woman answered.

Gabriel shifts gears on his stare going from pensive to hostile to curious before settling on a what now of a shrug - "Well... I got nothing!"

"Crsssshhhh... very well then" the woman rose from her desk, picked up the journal, weighed it in her hand and then dropped it into the wastebasket, "... that will be all for today, Mister Alephonso."

Gabriel looked over at the dream journal floating on a sea of empty styrofoam coffee cups and crumbled up wads of scribbled haikus that passed as memo's in Tower Incorporated.

"What was this all about?" he asks finally not knowing what else to do or say.

"Crsssshhhh... how would I know" she answers, walking over to the door she came in at, "it was your dream after all. You can go back to your desk. We're done here for now."

With that the woman staggered out the front door quickly followed by the two rabbit suited Security Executives behind her.

Gabriel sat there for a few minutes staring at the Slave Ship which now, due to a shift in the light through the offices drawn blinds, no longer seemed... alive. He then got up out of his seat, walked out the door, walked through the corridors of the Cube Farm, took his seat at the desk (barely noticing that his microwave dinner was still safely perched where he left it) and logged back into the system.

Comments

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

that dream is so... vivid.
and don't think i haven't seen my share of bunny/hazmat suits.
mine don't talk to me, though.