The two men walked briskly down the narrow corridor, clouds of their condensed breath trailed behind them and hung in the frigid air. Their footsteps clicked and echoed off the painted concrete floor and breezeblock walls. They were each dressed in a knee length lab coat with safety glasses propped ill-fittingly over the top of their spectacles. One held a clipboard and was leading the other, he gesticulated at the cryogenic tanks that palisaded the passageway as he spoke.
"That one there? James Dean. That little one next to it? James Dean's head."
The second man peered through the little viewing window on each tank at the frozen human inside. His initial curiosity soon turned into a macabre fascination. He looked at the top of the tank, a digital read-out was flickering between -193°C and -194°C. Regulators popped and hissed as they pumped liquid nitrogen through coiled pipes, discharging into the tank.
The first man came up alongside him and tapped the lid-end of a biro on the viewing window, "This one here. No-one knows. The name plate got lost a few years ago. There's a pool running."
"What's that empty one there?" The second man walked over to the open tank and stooped to read the plaque,
"Keith Richards."
"Yeah, that was commissioned back in the eighties, can you believe?"
The first man unclasped his ID card from his belt and stretched the elastic until it reached the reader. It beeped, and two LED's cycled between red and green for a moment before the door clicked and opened with a slow hiss. A cloud of vapour puffed ominously from the gap as the doors swung inwards.
"This area..." The first man wiggled his generously bushed eyebrows at his new colleague. "...is what we call The Freak Show,"
In this room, the tanks were stacked closer together. Their condition was as if the maintenance budget had stopped at the door. The two men slowed to a stroll. The viewing windows on these tanks were now glass fronts, providing unadulterated viewing.
Conjoined twins stood completely inert in a double tank, fixed as a photograph. They were cocooned in the liquid, stopped in time, their expressions as peaceful as sleep.
The men moved on. The second man reeled in shock at the next tank. It was full to the brim with dismembered limbs, appendages, organs and, if he had dared to look harder, a frozen eye peering through fingers as if purposely placed.
"Spare parts." Said the first man, "In case anything...drops off during thaw out."
The second man was suddenly drawn to a tank at the end of the room, without knowing why. It was the same as the others yet, inexplicably, had a looming presence. There was a folded piece of paper wedged under one of the feet, probably to return stability, as if a pub table.
Its contents were recognisably man, but one that was as if once a grand and proud statue, cast in wax and left out in the sun. Everything sagged and bulged like a subsiding structure. Things were in the vague position of where they were supposed to be, but an uneven inch lower. His face was wrenched as if about to sneeze, his stomach was pushed up to the glass and flattened like a back-of-the-minibus moonie.
"Ah. This one. Not a lot is known about him. He almost just...appeared one day. The plaque says Paul but no-one knows who put it there. We just call him The Trifle."
There was something grotesquely hypnotic about him. Staring at him had the same uncontrollable tensing affect as someone holding a fog horn in front of your face with a finger hovering teasingly over the button. There was an off-ness that was impossible to define.
Without realising it, the second man had leant in so close with his car crash curiosity, that his nose was almost touching the glass. His focus was so intense that he didn't notice the first man lean in next to him.
"He's like congealed custard pumped into a stocking isn't he?" The first man laid a friendly hand on the second man's shoulder.
The second man jumped as if he’d been surprise whipped across his cold, bare backside by a wet tea towel. He leapt backwards in shock, flailing his arms up as he stumbled onto a red mushroom shaped push button labelled, ‘Under No Circumstances To Be Pushed. (We're not even sure why we installed this)’
Suddenly, the lights snapped from sterile white to deep red, bathing the room in a bloody hue. A wailing siren sounded over top of ringing alarms. A robotic voice sounded through speakers, "Emergency! Emergency! Thaw initiated! Thaw initiated!"
There was a gurgling sound from The Trifle’s tank, so loud it could be heard over the din. The first man grabbed the second by the lab-coat lapels and shouted in his face, "What've you done? You fool! Run!"
With that, he dropped the second man, turned and sprinted out the door, his screams barely audible above the cacophony, "Run! All of you! Get out of Here! He's unthawed The Trifle!"
The second man was laid-out backwards on his elbows, his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest. Clouds of nitrogen rushed through vents at the top of the emptying tank, some poured from drains at the bottom and boiled into gas.
The alarms subsided, the door lifted from its seal and slid sideward with a whir. The room was now completely quiet, other than the desperate breath of the second man which still condensed in the cold.
The Trifle stood motionless in the empty tank. The world seemed to stop as if the nitrogen had frozen the entire room. Still no movement. Still nothing.
Then a stream of urine emanated from The Trifle. It quickly turned into a hot jet that flew out in a parabola, almost landing on the second man's shoes before easing back to its source.
The Trifle's fingers twitched. His eyes opened. They pointed in slightly different directions.
He slowly reached down and bent his left leg double, forcing it against his buttock. He repeated with his right. He stretched his arms above his head with his palms touching, he flexed one way and then the next. He bent down to touch his toes. Still bent, he raised his head to stare straight at the second man. He gave a slow smile.
"Now, where was I?"
The trifle snapped up and ran straight past the second man, who flinched as he was hit by the wind in The Trifle's wake. He called out behind The Trifle, "You were on W6R3. Don't forget to put..." The Trifle was already gone. The second man finished his sentence alone, talking to himself as he got up and dusted himself off, "...some bloody clothes on".
He clambered to his feet and eyeballed the aftermath. He twisted his neck round and shouted over his shoulder at the empy door, "And where’s your bloody five minute warm up walk?"
Wk2 R2 - Character Building
Irresponsible Dog Owners 🤬.
Week 7 and the shock of being overtaken by a man in a suit
NRC Running on Empty with Headspace
W8R2 - well that was a first for me!
