The Hostel & The Apartment

The Hostel

Back when I was younger, I wanted the world to right itself again; I held tightly onto an unrelenting optimism that I only ever found in Reuban. But I’m sure that auspiciousness is what ruined Reuban eventually; it persistently gnawed at his criminalised body until he surrendered to The Scientists. When I watched The Cleaners obsessively mopping the shiny linoleum in his room that is when I changed too, I think. After moving into the new apartment complex last spring, I decided I wanted the world to keep smoking, hissing, and chugging like a well-designed steam train - no more unrealistic glimpses into the optimistic human mind.

I am still afraid of going back there if I delete any final memories of Reuban – frequently I have walked to the bathroom or fridge in a desperate preoccupation when I realise my thoughts are wandering. The locket, coincidentally heart-shaped, is the only thing I’ve kept from that time, and it’s strategically stuffed between some old towels that The Cleaners complacently overlook due to their comfortable eleven-year routine.

Being born to The Scientists, I’ve always carried a self-conscious arrogance that has left me lonely; I aggravate my family and create hostility with the People. But Reuban, or so I’ve named him, was different. Reuban is the reason I have decided to follow in my father’s footsteps and take the lead position at the research facility. If Reuban is gone, so is my hope.

--

It was a particularly warm evening, and I was battling with my awning window by distributing my entire weight to gradually edge it open. In my exasperation from the hot air, I tried to stick my entire head outside. That’s when I saw him – or half of him and the cupboard door. For whatever reason, I held my gaze and quickly became engrossed in his entire evening. He went back to the cupboard at least three more times, never taking anything but just staring inside. I’ve often wondered what he was looking at.

About a week after that cupboard-exploring night, I saw him again. This time he was pushing his plastic desk a few inches to the right. I surprised myself by being agitated by the fact I could now only see his arm and shoulder when he was sitting down. I half expected, and wished, the Hostel alarm would have been activated but I guess moving furniture around in the Rooms was OK.

He rose from his chair and walked with a sense of purpose to the window. At that moment we caught eye contact. His eyes twitched almost imperceptibly, and then he turned back and disappeared to his right.

By mid-April watching Reuban’s perpetual routines became my favourite pastime. I’ve constantly changed my mind about whether he knew it was too. Occasionally I would catch him in glancing my direction, but I always concluded it was in my imagination. When you’re isolated in a room for eleven years that’s what happens; you start to question your own mind.

--

‘The first sign of going crazy is thinking you’re going crazy’ my father told me in the car one afternoon whilst driving to Aunty Cathleen’s annual summer party. She was the type of person who held annual summer parties. We were the type of people who sighed when receiving the invitation, moaned about it for the following few weeks and then reluctantly piled into the car with some last-minute ‘we can’t get out of it’ supermarket wine. Being only sixteen at the time, I only had one ear on my father’s Southern drawl and the other was preoccupied with my headphone that was blaring The Rolling Stones. Ahh, music.

‘Leanne, are you listening to what I’m telling you?’

‘Yes, dad’

‘The Hostel will be finished by the end of the month and the first patients will arrive. This is a huge moment for me.’

‘Yes, dad’

‘Well, I'm sorry girl but I can't stay . Feelin' like I do today . It's too much pain and too much sorrow . Guess I'll feel the same tomorr...’

‘Leanne!’

‘Yes, I’m listening, the other patients are arriving soon.’

‘No, I said you need to have finished packing by next week’

‘Ok’

I don’t know why I remember this afternoon so well. I think it was because it was stuck between the final few days of my old-world ignorance. The Scientists already had power, but the last Hostel building marked the completion of the takeover. I spent most of the party covering my eyes, cursing that I forgot my sunglasses, and plotting how to eat another paper plateful of dried out finger food. But after eleven years, that memory turned from an insignificant, boring, and somewhat awkward Saturday to one of the best afternoons of my life. It’s funny how the brain does that.

--

About halfway between my apartment complex and the hostel, the parking lot messily encloses a small one-room building. A vantage point to look between the Crazy and The Science. No one has bothered to keep it neat, not even The Cleaners; ivy has forcefully weaved itself into the chipping brick. Reuban’s room looked directly onto the rusting corrugated iron roof. The day The Scientists removed him I spent hours just staring at that roof; I felt comfort knowing his eyes had rested there too.

The Apartment

She reminded me of my late sister. Her plain expressions concealed a deeper analysis of the world, and her slow movements displayed a sense of careful consideration. After ten or so years, watching her in the same room, pace up and down, up and down, up and down, it didn’t seem so bad. She was sheltered from it all. All she had to worry about was her sheets being changed, which pill she would swallow for dinner and what dream she would have that evening.

I often saw her gazing into my room, but with little else to do who could blame her? Sometimes I decided to play tricks like walking to my cupboard three times in a row. Any subtle change in human behaviour produces unconscious interest. My Scientist taught me that.

Rumours were circulating that The Head Scientist was using her as an ‘in-house’ experiment. I wasn’t so sure. I think she was a remnant of old-world love. She should be one of us, one of The Crazy ones. Jack said she went to school with Giles and had bipolar. Carrie thought it was schizophrenia. All I knew was that she was someone’s daughter. A Scientist’s daughter.

Shannon worked at the hostel. She was who we called ‘Middle Ground’. Not a Scientist but not a Crazy either. She worked for the Scientists. Don’t ask me what her tasks were. Bit of this and a bit of that. Every night at nine, Shannon would rattle along the hallway with a trolley trying to command authority no one wished to give her.

One night – somewhere between June and September – for the first time ever, the trolley stopped outside my door. When you carry out same routine for so long you become accustomed to the noises manufactured by your surroundings.

Knock Knock Knock.

‘Simon’

Intrigued, I opened the door with such tenacity it hit my big toe.

‘Arrghhh’

‘You alright?’

‘Yeah’

‘I need to speak to you, can I come inside?’

‘Sure’

‘We’ve had a request from the apartment complex. You’ve been gifted this’. She paused. ‘I have no idea who it’s from so don’t ask questions.’

Between her fingers, she dangled a necklace. It looked like one of the lockets that were originally worn by The Scientists. It dangled there for a few seconds while I stared.

‘Don’t tell anyone else, ok?’

It didn’t take me long to realise she had sent it to me. For the following few days, she was at her window from morning till night. Her face was possessed by tormented excitement held mainly in her eyes. Sometimes she talked to herself through the window. It made me uneasy, as though the gift had been some sort of test to collect an emotion from me.

It was only until a week later I realised the locket opened. That detail baffles me considering I was so goddammed bored the whole time. Maybe I was just stuck in a puzzling disturbance; I owned something so valuable that had absolutely no purpose.

The moments after finding the pill are hazy. They say that when something traumatic happens your memory forces you to remember every detail. For me, the opposite occurred. For an entire twelve hours, I catapulted between distorted reality and fierce dreams. I tossed between my sheets, twisting them to the point of discomfort.

Only now do I remember my final hours in the hostel, an endless chain of papers, needles and faces. The Cleaner’s lemon disinfectant made my head sore. From the moment the pill touched my tongue, the most prized brain medication in the entire world, I knew I’d made a mistake.

--

My new room was empty when I woke – the walls had turned yellow, and the windows had shrunk into large envelope sized slits. Shannon was reading something lying on the desk; perhaps it was my history. I didn’t care to know, and I turned back around pretending to be asleep.

I spent my days in constant weariness as most of my daily pleasures were stripped away. No more communal dinners, no more exercise, no more music. The isolation disturbingly comforted me knowing there was no more hope left. Every part of my brain had succumbed to The Science.

And as the stars grew brighter, I thought of The Scientist’s daughter. Maybe she wasn’t as Crazy as I thought she was. Maybe I was the Crazy one.