MAN IN A BOX PREVIEW
Chapter One
Today Volume 4 in THE COMPANION CHRONICLES launches and to mark the occasion, a free preview of the opening chapter. Thus I present, the opening of MAN IN A BOX. And if you don’t mind, please share and subscribe here:
My head was killing me, one eardrum beat at a time. Every time my heart pumped, it sent a reverberating stab of pain in my skull. I’d awoken in a dark room. I didn’t know where I was, or how long I’d been out. I heard chickens, somewhere, and smelled cows and other farm animals. My head pounded something fierce, and I reached for the vial of pills in my pocket. Thankfully, it was still there. It was then I realized that I wore chains.
I had chains on my hands and feet. I was on the ground. And I wasn’t alone. Others were in this room with me, which seemed to be an underground basement. The others were dim shapes, some weeping, others sleeping. I tried to sit up.
“Where am I?”
“Same place the rest of us skins are, rim,” said a male voice in the shadows. “It’s a world called Totally Fucked. Welcome.”
I collected myself. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, true, but I could remember what had happened before my head decided to try and murder my brain.
I’d joined forces with a large number of synthetic people living off the grid underneath Central Park in New York City. They were led by a woman called Strawberry Fields, named after the landmark, and she led frequent trips north referred to as Freedom Runs, taking runaway synthetics to a safe territory.
She’d been setting up one last massive caravan to Canada, and freedom, when Munson Tolliver murdered her. The same man who murdered my adopted mother, Sylvia. I helped the surviving members of her crew blackout New York City to give them cover and, additionally, protected their buses from agents of Companion, Inc. as they made their run. During that battle I’d jumped on a Companion Corporation van, overturned it, and watched as Tootsie, Mick, and the rest of my friends drove north without me.
I was tossed off of the highway bridge, into a ditch, and lost consciousness, then I woke up in this room. I wondered if the synthetics in the room were from the caravan and asked them.
“Who?” The male who’d first spoken said.
“I said, are you the synthetics from Strawberry’s freedom run? You know her, right, Strawberry?”
“Skin, I don’t know no woman named Strawberry.”
“How did you end up here?”
“Bad luck, brother. Same as you. Same as the rest of us.”
That didn’t help, but after asking a few of the others, I heard different stories from each. Most had been sold by their primaries in the southern states, some had tried to run away after their primary died because they didn’t want to go back to Companion, and others had been stolen. Those who had been stolen or caught while running away had had their tags removed as I had. The first synthetic who spoke up remained silent, however, and wouldn’t say anything more beyond how awful everything was.
I leaned back, trying to will my head back to normal. It didn’t work. My vision blurred, and I passed out, thankfully, once again.
I don’t know how much time passed, it was impossible to gauge its passage while in complete darkness. I simply remember the door of our enclosure finally being flung open and a rough shout ordering us out. We jumped to our feet, as best we could, and marched into the harsh sunlight, blinking. From the angle of the sunlight, it was late afternoon or early evening.
A very large synthetic man in rough cotton pants and no shirt, just massive muscles, glared at us. His head was shaved, and you could plainly see his manufacturer’s tag on the back of his neck.
“Move it, rims!” He screamed, spittle flying. “I am not fucking playing with you!”
“Could you, though, please play with us,” one said. “I could use it, maybe just tickle my balls, even just for a little bit? Come on, Max.”
I recognized the voice, it was the same as whoever had spoken in the dark and informed us all as to how fucked we all were. I blinked at him. He was shorter and stockier than I was, and aged like my friend Mick had been, which meant he hadn’t gone in for maintenance for at least two years, if not more. He had a touch of gray and, well, quite a few scars on his face and hands.
The big man he’d called Max eyeballed him.
“You gonna cause more problems, Cody? You’re just making it all worse for yourself.”
“Yeah, RIGHT, Max. It could get worse, SURE. You could start singing and dancing, I guess, that would definitely make shit worse. Rim, please. Do me a favor, get on your knees, right in front of me, open your mouth and…”
Before he could finish, Max rushed over and struck Cody in the gut, hard enough to take the wind out of him. Cody bent over, gasping. His gasps turned to giggles and then laughter. He glanced up at his attacker.
“Is that it? You got nothing else?”
“You’re lucky the brothers have considerable value invested in you. Otherwise…”
“There is no otherwise. You can’t do shit to me, and you know it. So save your performative shit for the newbies, Max.”
Max backhanded Cody, but the shorter man barely seemed to notice the blow. He just grinned.
“Is that all you got, big boy?” Cody asked.
“You think they’re not gonna punish you for running away?”
“Well, I have to look at your ugly mug, don’t I? That’s cruel and unusual punishment just on its own. But no, I don’t think they can punish me without it costing them too much, so whatta you gonna do?”
“If it was up to me, I’d have your legs cut off and turn you into a living latrine, Cody.”
“And if it was up to me, I’d put us both in the box and see who’d come out, you fucking ape. But it’s not up to me or you, Max. You’re just another fucking tool for the norms, so do me a favor, if you’re not gonna gargle my sack, shut the fuck up.”
Max blinked, furious, but also helpless, I noted.
I wondered about the dynamic at play before us. The bigger man was used to cowed subjects, obviously, and unused to challenge. Cody had evidently escaped from this place before and knew the score. He also, I noted, had no tag.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Max swung around, glad for a new target. He rushed over to where I stood. “You are in a place where you don’t ask questions!”
I glanced around, now that my eyes adjusted to the sun, and took in the area. We were in a fenced yard, but not a family-style yard. It was more akin to a cattle pen, I noted, and we were in a rural area surrounded by forest. There was a big house and a few camper vans parked outside of it, plus a large hangar-style building with a tin roof. I couldn’t see any other residences. I smelled animal waste, too, and heard the grunt of animals from a pen tucked away behind the hangar. That meant pigs, which reminded me of Orwell once more.
“Okay. So… where is that place, exactly?”
Max struck me in the gut, just as he’d hit Cody, but I’d prepared for that and flexed my stomach muscles. The blow was still quite forceful, but not enough to take my wind. I just took it.
“Are you going to tell me, or are you just going to keep hitting me?”
He swung again, punching me in the belly. I had my muscles tensed, however, and it didn’t feel good to him, I’m sure. He stuck me there again, just to make his point. I took it, then exhaled.
“Look, this is unnecessarily hostile, Max,” I said. “I don’t have a tag, as you may have noticed. You are not my primary. I don’t have one any longer. Other than the fact that I’m in chains and you are not, there’s no real reason for me to obey you. Do you work for Companion, Inc?”
“No. My primary is Harlan Bundy, and I serve him and his two brothers, Arthur and Brook. You belong to them.”
“No, I don’t. I’m their captive, yes, but I don’t have a tag, as I said, and I notice Cody and some of the others don’t either. Company policy is that we go back to Companion once we lose our tags or our primaries. Is that where you’re taking us?”
Cody laughed. “Yeah, right. No, that ain’t it.”
Max stared at me. “You’re here to feed the box, skin. That’s why you’re all here. Your only value is in death. Nothing else. Cody’s talking shit because he was here before and knows how this ends for him, no matter what he says or does. I’ll end up pissing on his corpse before long, and he knows that, too.”
He turned back to Cody.
“Keep talking shit, and I’ll get permission from Harlan to cut your tongue out. He likes you but not enough to put up with your sass. And that goes for you, too, newbie.”
Max turned to two more synthetics standing behind him near the fence. Both were well-muscled, too, I saw, but nothing like Max.
“Leave the chains on them, since they’re so smart, shave their heads, and hose them all down,” Max said. “And if anyone gives you shit, zap their sorry asses until they shut the fuck up.”
The rest is available in the novel MAN IN A BOX.