Behind closed doors

It was a Friday afternoon, and the faint snowing that had been going on all morning started to intensify. The wind was howling as Jonathan hurried to get the job done before the blizzard would make it impossible to take his car and go home. He looked with anxiety through the window, seeing the snow pile up on his car. It was already buried, and barely recognizable. The data he had to enter on the computer seemed endless, and he had to finish it before leaving work. His boss, William, insisted on it like it was a matter of life or death. Jonathan was a bit scared of this man, even though he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even to himself.

William was a tall and large man, with thick, hairy forearms that made him look like a butcher. His gaze had always some kind of threatening aspect to it, even when he was laughing or smiling. He was the type of guy you didn’t want to disappoint.

And he paid well, too. When Jonathan saw the job offer that simply stated :

Data entry. No experience required. 22$/h.’’, he thought it was too good to be true. And it was, in a way. The “office” was a creepy old basement, with poor lighting, in a scary neighborhood. It was a strange place, with a few rooms separated with slightly dirty concrete walls. He worked in a small room with a single window from which could be seen the deserted parking.

The task he had to do was simple, but weird. He had to enter numbers and codes, from documents into an excel sheet. He asked what those numbers were all about, but William answered it was confidential.

And so he went with this mind-numbing job, with the only consolation that he was paid, and paid well for this meaningless work.

At 5 PM, it was pitch dark outside, and Jonathan could not see outside. Maybe the snow had stopped, he thought. But when he finally finished his last page, put on his coat, his boots and his hat, and finally stepped outside, he realized he wouldn’t be home soon. The silence in the street was eerie. Not a single car was there, since the road had not been cleared from the almost thirty centimeters thick snow. He had nothing to do but wait, alone in the building. William had gone home at noon, and since he was the only employee of the strange little “business” he was alone in the place.

There was nothing to do there. Jonathan started scrolling through his social media but nothing was really succeeding in entertaining him. He wanted to be home so badly, have a cup of wine and eat a warm dinner, alone with his dog. But time was passing, yet the road was still buried deep under a thick snow coat. At about 8 PM, as his hunger started to put him in a bad mood, he decided to eat in a restaurant near by, hoping it wouldn’t be closed because of the blizzard. While he was in the hallway, he saw some light escaping through the bottom of a door. William must have forgotten to turn the lights off, he thought. He opened the thick door, made out of a material to cut off noises, which led to a long corridor, grey as everything else in this place. Jonathan had never been here before. William had told him that the only room he was aloud in was the office. Jonathan wasn’t a naturally curious guy, so it was not difficult at all to respect to this simple rule. But now that he was on the other side of one of the door, no turning back was possible. Strange sounds, some sort of mumbling was reaching his hears. Perfectly immobile, he listened for a few minutes. The noise continued, undeniable but unidentifiable. He realized all of a sudden the evidence: William was a scientist using animals for a research, and all the data entered for weeks in excel sheets must have been measures taken on them.

Jonathan felt suddenly cold inside. He felt weird about being involved in a situation he had never suspected. He slowly started to walk forward, and the sounds amplified. He slowed down even more his walking, as if he never wanted to arrive at the end of the corridor. The mumbling became more distinct, and showed no fear or suffering. He tried to imagine which animals could produce such calm, almost human like sounds, but he couldn’t. At the end of the hallway, a double door with push handles faced him. When he stepped on the other side, it felt like a dream. He even wondered if he had fallen asleep in his office, since what he had in front of him was ridiculously outrageous.

It was, again, an immense hallway, and on each side, cells, like of a prison, in which men, women, and young people who looked like teenagers, sat or laid in beds, their eyes wide open from surprise looking at him in silence.

- What are you doing here?

His question floated in the air; no one picked it up. In the eyes of those people, he could read the exact same question: What was he doing there?

- Don’t worry, I’m calling the police right now, it’s gonna be alright!

A lively disapprobation raised from every cell, as everyone screamed: “NO!” in an outraged tone.

Jonathan was bamboozled. “Stockholm’s syndrome”, he mumbled to himself, trying to make sense of the situation by putting a word on it.

A woman, in a cell illuminated by blinding neon lights, hurled towards him and, her hands gripping the dirty bars, said:

- Don’t do that! Why would you do that? Listen, it’s not was you think.

She was extremely skinny, and she had a powerful twitch that made the right side of her face contract every two seconds. Her eyes were deep in their orbits, her hair was messy. She was wearing a white tunic. Jonathan noticed that there was no bed in her cell, only a table, with an ipad on it, some books and pens, a chair, a toilet and a bucket with water in it. Everything in her small room was illuminated by this wounding light.

- We are consenting to this. Don’t worry about this. Who are you?

- I’m… I’m an employee, I didn’t know…

- Well, now you know, Dr William Roberts is a brilliant scientist, conducting his experience on real people, like me. Thanks to him, we will all be contributing to science. The experience conducted on me is on sleep deprivation. You see those lights? This is my personal hell.

She laughed convulsively, which made Jonathan doubt of her sanity. She spoke extremely fast, as if she was on some kind of drug.

- I’ve been awake for a week already! You see those patches on my head? They are connected to a computer, and every time I fall asleep, I am woken up by an electric shock. And you know what’s the best in all of this?

She stuck her head out, like she was about to tell me a secret:

- I’m paid 10 000$ for this ordeal, for fourteen days in hell! Have you ever been paid 10 000$ for doing nothing, for two weeks?

She laughed again.

- Don’t listen to her, said a man a few cells forward. She’s crazy. It’s the sleep deprivation.

He was a round man, bald, and of a weird skin tone, almost greenish. He was missing a few teeth.

Jonathan suddenly came back to reality:

- I’m calling the police right now!

- No! Don’t do that. I mean, she’s crazy, but essentially, all she said is true. We are here voluntarily. For some of us, it is our only way to make some money to feed our children. Look at me, I have three of them, and have been jobless for 6 months before getting this incredible offer. Now, all I have to do, is follow this weird diet for a couple more weeks, and I’m off with 15 000$. Plus, while I’m here doing nothing, I have time to finally read the Bible, to meditate and pray. It’s almost a monastery life, it’s really not that bad.

He laughed, although he seemed a bit sad inside.

- If you take this away from us, we’re on the street. What will I tell my children, when I tell them there’s no dinner tonight, because daddy lost his job? And this girl, over here.

He pointed a sickly young woman, sitting her legs crossed, on the floor, looking at Jonathan with a slight smile painted on her pale face.

- If you call the cops, she’s gonna have to go back to prostituting herself, is that what you want?

- But… This is illegal!

Jonathan felt very deeply the emptiness of those words, in this room full of human suffering.

- So what! Laws are the work of society, and society have all let us down. William have been our savior. Look at this woman there. They are looking for her, to put her in prison. What did she do? Her husband have been violent with her for years. One day, he beat her young daughter, three years old. That night, while he was asleep, she shoot him. And now her life is ruined, so is the lives of her kids. Except no, it’s not totally a waste. When she get out of here, she’ll have 20 000$ cash, enough to start a new life, in a new state. She is the sweetest person you’ll ever know. She does not deserve to go to prison.

Jonathan realized with horror that his mind was paralyzed with hesitation. It had been fifteen minutes, and he didn’t run to get help yet.

- Then why are your… rooms… locked then, if you are here voluntarily?

- This is a contract. This is hard. But it’s worth it. At night, when our bodies are tired, and our mind wanders, it would be way too tempting to get out of here. The will power that would be required to follow our contract would be insanely draining.

- Plus, it would be another variable in the study.

The voice belonged to a young man with glasses and long hair, casually laying on his bed, looking at pictures on his phone. Jonathan redirected his attention to the bald guy:

- And what is your… experience about?

- Oh! Pretty simple. I just have to drink olive oil, and only that – no food, just oil-. The goal is to document when the malnutrition symptoms start to appear. So far so good!

Jonathan wasn’t so sure about that, as he stared as the yellow eyes and the weird skin color of the man.

He suddenly felt weird inside. Something had changed irremediably. It seemed like the world in which he lived in had been hidden from him until now. He could see clearly, but what he saw was atrocious. It was painful, twisted and sickly.

A noise came from the other side of the hallway, and someone started walking towards him: William. Jonathan felt his heart sinking at his feet. Quickly, he tried to make up an excuse in his head, but nothing would come. He then switched to plan B, which was to run, simply, to run for his life. But all those half decisions were taking too long, and soon enough William was right before him, stopping at a respectful distance, silently.

Jonathan started to walk back.

- I won’t tell anyone.

In his terrorized mind, he saw William smiling at him, and then taking out a long, shiny knife, forcing him to enter a cell, and making him keep his arms up for days, until they became unmovable, or practicing Chinese water torture on him. In the harsh industrial light, William’s face was scary, with deep shadows hiding his eyes, but his expression was gentle.

- You can go now, and report me to the police, if you think what I do is immoral. I will not be angry at you for reacting to something that is against your own moral code.

He stepped on the side, inviting his employee to get out. Relief overwhelmed Jonathan, yet he didn’t rush through the exit. Something didn’t feel right.

- I won’t tell anyone, he said with more sureness.

William laughed. He then pointed at a camera on the ceiling.

- Now that I have all my data, I can tell you. This was all a big experience for my PhD in psychology, studying malleability of individuals moral system. These are all actors. May I use the footage? You will of course benefit a financial compensation.