The Annihilation of Foreverland (6 page)

The door clicked behind him. Danny stayed in bed with the sheet pulled up. He remained there for a while and only got dressed because he didn’t want Mr. Jones in the room when he did.

A
ll modesty was about to disappear from Danny’s life.

Danny walked the Yard with Mr. Jones. This time he had no problem with his slow and steady gait. The others were walking with their Investors, too. They were all spread out, heading in the same direction: the multi-eyed round roof peeking above the distant trees. Their paths converged the closer they got.

They got in line as they entered a narrow path. There was little talking. But the silence was more than that; it was the sort of intense concentration that spontaneously happened before a big game, before surgery or some other life-altering event. Even Sid, walking a few bodies ahead of Danny, was quiet.

Suddenly, the path ended in an opening. The Haystack was at the far side. Its concrete wall was painted dark brown, stained with algae and sucker-cups that remained from vines stripped away. A man stood at the entrance with a clipboard in his folded arms. He was old, but kind of young among the old men. He had gentle gray eyes inside folds of skin. He began checking off items on his clipboard as they entered.

A bell rang three times.

Danny didn’t look around but once. Zin was to his left. He lifted his eyebrows in mild celebration. Just past Zin was Parker as glassy-eyed and slack as ever. He wasn’t looking around. He didn’t even look like he knew anyone else was there.

“Welcome, young men,” the man at the door suddenly said. “My name is Mr. Clark. I’ll be supervising this round. Most of you know the drill. I know some of you are nervous, as would be expected, but I assure you that your experience will be just as exciting as the previous ones have been. For the newcomers, you will follow your Investor inside and he will orient you on what to do. But there’s nothing to worry about, things are very simple inside.”

Mr. Clark looked at his clipboard.

“Before we enter, are there any questions?” He looked around with the same welcoming smile. “Very well, then. Let’s begin, shall we?”

He pushed the door open and stood to the side. Mr. Jones’s hand fell on Danny’s shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. Danny immediately tensed, but noticed every Investor was doing the same move with the hand on the shoulder, guiding their kid into the Haystack in some sort of ritual. Danny got in line. When they stepped inside, it was cold and dim.

It was the last time he would see the sun for quite some time.

Danny clenched up, a full-body seizure.

His knees locked and he pushed his weight against Mr. Jones’s hand. It wasn’t the dim light coming through the skylights or the giant steel fan that waited to chop them up or the smell of urine or the dank-dungeon cells that lined both sides of the
aisle
that made Danny step back. It was a sense of panic, of fear, that saturated the atmosphere like an electrical current, tingling in his bowels. The boys ahead of him didn’t seize up, but they stutter-stepped. Like the end of a ship’s plank was dead ahead.

Danny felt this type of fear spreading through his groin like cold fingers once before. A memory emerged in the soupy sea of memories inside his head. He remembered getting pulled out of the back seat of a car with his hands cuffed behind his back by someone. But then like everything he tried to remember, there were gaps.

There were FBI shirts, and big doors—

“It’s all right, Danny Boy.” Mr. Jones gently urged him forward.

Danny’s knees refused to unbuckle. The cages were open and waiting. The boys ahead of him each walked inside one without resistance and their Investor closed the door.

“Come on!” someone shouted from outside. “We’re waiting, Danny Boy!”

“Come along, my boy.” Mr. Jones pressed forward, pushing Danny ahead. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Danny walked with his weight leaning into Mr. Jones’s hand. The old man showed surprising strength. His hand was like a talon. It guided him past the open cells. No cot or toilet or window on the walls. The boys were stri
p
ping off their shirts. That’s when Danny realized the cold wasn’t just fear eating away his innards but the humid cold air dimpling his skin.

They stopped about halfway down the
aisle
. Mr. Jones turned Danny to the left. He tried to squirm away but the old man’s claw shoved him inside the open cell. The door latched closed before he could turn around.

Mr. Jones grabbed the bars.

“Why are you doing this?” Danny suddenly wanted to be back in his bed. He didn’t mind if Mr. Jones sat on the bed and patted his knee. He would let him touch his face, if that’s what he wanted.

“Danny Boy, trust me. Everything will be all right. It’ll be better than okay, you just trust me now, son. These boys have been through this already and they’re doing better, I promise.”

No one else needed to be pushed inside a cell. They knew the deal and didn’t seem to mind. They didn’t look happy, but they weren’t freaking out.

“We’re about healing the world,” Mr. Jones said, quietly. “This is the work that we ask you to do. As with any work, it is not always easy. But it will be rewarding, my boy. Richly.”

The Haystack was silent except for the somber mutterings of a few Investors. The rest of the boys were taking off their clothes. First their shirts. Then shoes, socks and pants. And finally underwear.

Completely naked!

Mr. Jones held out his hands. “You need to hand me your clothes, Danny Boy. We enter the work like we enter life, completely exposed to the world. We are reborn into our flesh, revealing our humility for everyone to witness.”

Danny backed up. The others were folding their clothes and passing them between the bars, neatly stacked. They stood unabashed with various amounts of pubic hair. The cold had shriveled most of them to embarrassing sizes, but no one seemed to care all that much. None of them were looking around like Danny.

“No one can touch you, Danny Boy.”

Mr. Jones was right. There was a gap between the cells on each side. Even if he reached all the way through, he wouldn’t be able to touch the person imprisoned next to him. He noticed the walls were set inside slots that could slide but it only looked like the cell could get smaller.

“You’re safe inside the cell. No one will bother you.”

“But… but why? Why do we have to do this?” Danny’s voice cracked with an embarrassing whine.

“You’ll understand. You’ll just have to trust me.”

Danny hugged himself. “I just don’t want to. You can’t just expect me to… I’m not just going to get naked because everyone else is. I’m not doing it.”

“Stop pissing around, Danny Boy!” Sid shouted from across the
aisle
. His penis had shrunk into the bush of pubic hair that crawled up and around his belly button. “The longer you go on like that, the longer it takes… NOW GET NAKED, BOY!”

Investors were already leaving. Mr. Jones stood with his hands around the bars. His expression was silent and sympathetic. Sid was growling and pacing inside his cell. But Danny couldn’t break the grip the cold hand of fear had on him. He just wasn’t going to do it. He just wanted to close his eyes and disappear. He wished this would all go away, that he could somehow escape his body and go somewhere nice and warm and safe.

“Hey.” Zin was pulling his shirt over his head in the cell next to him. “Listen, you got to do this. I know it’s all weird, but it’s no big deal. It’s like showering in the gym. I can tell you, nothing happens.”

“Then why do we have to do it?
”

Zin shrugged while he stepped out of his shorts. “To make the first part more uncomfortable, I guess. To humiliate us, to make us want the needle. I don’t give two craps either way. All I know is that we got to get this thing going or it’s going to suck being here even longer.”

Zin folded his shorts and shirt into a stack and placed his flip-flops on top. His Investor gave him a nod and left.

“Danny Boy,” Mr. Jones said. “You should understand that in life, there is joy and there is suffering. Your work includes everything. The Haystack is designed to allow you to experience suffering safely, to learn to let go of your physical body so that you may experience another level of your existence. But I can’t make you, Danny Boy. I can’t make you do it. You’ll have to do it on your own.” Mr. Jones held out his hands. “You’ll have to walk naked alone.”

Others had joined Sid in the taunting. Danny could see there was no way to escape. And the others had been through it and they didn’t seem to mind. Zin, too.

Danny’s shirt came off, first. The cold air pulled his skin tight and his nipples were like BBs. He was shaking when he took off his shorts. Despite Sid screaming to go faster, he took his time getting his shoes off.

His underwear was last.

He took a long shaky breath before pulling them down. Unlike Sid and Zin, he didn’t have much hair downstairs. What little he did have was bright red and barely covered his boyhood that looked more like a mushroom cap.

He threw the clothes at Mr. Jones
’
feet and cupped his hands over his genitalia.

“I’ll need you to fold the clothes, Danny Boy.” Mr. Jones didn’t stoop to pick them up. “It’s our attention to every moment of our life that matters. To make room for this very moment, to allow it to unfold. To care for life. Now, please, hand me your clothes properly.”

Danny squatted down and did his best to put his clothes in order like Zin had done. Mr. Jones didn’t seem completely pleased with the quality of his stack, but he nodded and stepped back. He nodded again and without another word, exited the Haystack.

The wrath of the others didn’t stop. Danny backed up until he pressed against the bars, wishing it was dark enough to hide him. He kept his hands over his privates. The room had become loud with anger, vibrating inside Danny’s head. Even Zin had his hands on
the
bars, shouting obscenities until finally one Investor was followed by another until they were all gone.

Sid tried to shake the solid bars on his cage, shouting, “Come on! Come on, already! LET’S GO!”

It seemed to go on forever. Danny’s shoulder blades had numbed on the cold steel when a loud clank erupted from the ceiling. Everyone cheered as the dim light began to fade. Shutters inside the skylights were turning. What little light was available disappeared.

Danny shivered in the dark.

“Danny Boy?” Zin called.

“Yeah?”

“Welcome to the Haystack.”

Danny moved to the center of the cell. It was so dark that it didn’t matter where he stood, no one would see him. The worst part was the concrete, slick and cold. Danny began to pace to keep warm.

“Save your strength.”

There was a lump in the darkness to Danny’s right. Slowly, the details of the room began to return with grainy, gray detail and fuzzy edges. The lump was Zin, sitting in the center of his cell with his knees pulled against his chest and his arms wrapped around his shins.

“You want to protect your core, Danny Boy,” Zin said. “Do whatever you can to conserve your body heat. Walking around is only going to waste it. It might feel good now but you’ll pay for it later.”

“Why are they doing this, Zin?”

“Sit down and do what I told you,” he snapped. “And use your legs to keep your balls from touching the floor. You don’t want those getting cold.”

He didn’t have to worry about his scrotum touching anything. It had shriveled up like a mummified prune. The floor felt like a glacier. He stopped rocking back and forth before Zin snapped at him again, but he couldn’t control the shivering.

“You good?” Zin asked. “Now, get into a breathing rhythm. Slowly, take in a breath and let it exhale on its own. In.” Zin sucked air through his nostrils, loudly. “Out,” he said, letting it leak out. He did it again, and again.

Danny followed his example. The chattering continued, but he felt less scattered. A little more settled. The fear that was strangling his insides had subsided to mild warmth. The muscles that were bunched around his shoulders released.

In.

Out.

He continued.

The room was mostly silent. Some of the others were talking. There was subtle laughter. Someone was whimpering.

“Here’s the deal,” Zin finally said. “We come here every two weeks, get naked and wait for the needle.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll find out. After this round, we’ll screw around for two weeks like we’ve been doing until the next one. You get the picture.”

“How long do we do this?”

“Don’t ask that question. Just count your breath, that’s all you need to know.”

Laughter crackled through the room. Someone said to shut the hell up, then added, “God, I hate this freaking part.”

Danny went back to breathing like Zin. It wasn’t helping, he was getting colder. But there wasn’t much choice. Danny could make out more details, could see that Zin was sitting with his back straight and legs folded beneath him, his hands in his lap. His chest rose and fell.