The Growing Cell

The first escape involves crawling through a tunnel, naked, claustrophobic, unable to breathe,  but toward a light. 

Then pain, and hunger, and cold.

Soon I’m behind bars again, and so I’ve traded one prison for another. 

…

My situation soon becomes clear. I’m being held captive by two guards, a man and a woman. Their language is nonsensical. Additionally, I’m much smaller than they are. Comically so. And my cell is just wide enough for me to lie down in. 

The enforced schedule is the worst part. I feel my mind starting to tick according to their timetables. I’m always fed the same goop, at the same hour. I can smell the meals they eat, but I’m never permitted a bite. 

The powerlessness of my situation is demoralizing. I am reduced to using my… baser processes to voice petty protests. But for each of my moves, they have a counter. 

If I scream, I am gagged. 

If I refuse meals, I go hungry. 

If I piss in my cell, it is cleaned up. 

But there’s a wild card. An animal roaming about. A big dog, long legs holding his torso high enough that I need to twist my neck to look up at him. 

To the chagrin of my captors, the dog has taken an interest in me. At night, I will awaken, roll over, and see his snout pressed in-between the bars of my cell, his nostrils flaring as he sniffs me, perplexed by my presence here.

Should I lean too close, or roll over in my sleep, his tongue rolls out, covering a truly surprising distance, and slobbers all over my face. 

I like this smelly mutt, completely useless as a guard. But as an accomplice…?

…

There’s an eye in the sky. A blinking red dot above my cell. 

A security camera. They’re watching. Even when they’re not in the room. 

However, my spirits are buoyed by the fact that even in my destitute station, I have assets. And there’s only two guards. And they need to sleep. 

That’s the first pattern I notice, their absence at regular times at night. Soon I notice other patterns, and  I can use that to my advantage. Specifically, by disrupting those schedules.

Secondarily, I need to befriend the animal. He may be instrumental as an ally. 

Thirdly, I need to render the surveillance ineffective somehow. 

Disrupt schedule. Establish ally. Neutralize surveillance. 

Thus having conceived of the plan, I put it into action. 

…

I scream. 

Day after day, but especially night after night, I awaken and screech until one, or both, of the guards comes to check on me. 

And they always come. Sooner or later. 

I’m a very capable screamer. 

After a time, their eyes are getting bloodshot, their hair unkempt. 

They feed me. They argue with me. They argue among themselves, shouting over my wailing. 

Soon, they are bargaining with me, begging me. 

While this is playing out, night in and night out,  I am making progress with the dog. 

I play with his nose when he sticks it through the bars. I toss objects from my cell, and he brings them back. (I’ll admit, I’m not as gifted with a throwing arm, as I am with a screaming pipes…)

The day finally comes. 

I stir in the night, unable to sleep, a flurry of excitement in my belly. 

I roll over and see the dog, on the other side of the bars. 

His ears twitch. 

Asleep. 

He looks very peaceful. I feel a moment of guilt for the rude awakening he’s about to get.

Brace yourself.

I inhale and then unleash the most piercing scream I could force from my lungs. It is appallingly loud, and I stretch it as long as I can. It’s the best (worst?) I’ve done yet. When it’s over, I’m sweating from the exertion, and I gasp to refill my lungs. 

I pause to inhale. I need to do it again. And again, if necessary. 

The dog is up now, watching me, head on tilt. 

I cut loose again, all of my yearning for freedom and liberty and autonomy  into this one. Stars twinkle under my eyelids from the effort. The dog howls in camaraderie. 

The guards barge in, chattering between themselves, their voices dripping with frustration and fatigue. The lights flare on overhead, blinding me for a moment. 

I am placed on a gurney, squirming, legs kicking. 

The male puts his phone down. The phone which is hooked up to the surveillance camera. 

He’s busy arguing, they point to me, gesture to my cell, to the dog, the lights, mostly at each other. The dog is excited, running in circles. 

Chaos. Their attention is scattered. 

He’s left the phone just within reach. 

Now. 

I shit myself. Loudly. Bombastically. Explosively. 

They both go silent. 

The man throws his arms up, leaves the room. The woman follows. 

I reach over, grab the phone. It is awkward to hold, much too big for me, and the screen shows an overhead view of my cell. 

I chuck it in the dog’s direction. 

He does exactly what I hoped, exactly what I had gotten him used to doing. He pounces on it, gobbles it in his mouth, and whips his head left and right, the device lodged in his teeth, ears slapping his head this way and that. 

Good boy.

Surveillance neutralized.

It takes both guards surprisingly long to recognize what happened. The male notices the missing phone first, having returned with supplies to clean the mess I had made. 

For his part, the dog makes a last-ditch effort to keep the phone, evading the man and woman as they try to retrieve the phone. 

Very good boy.

The man examines the phone while the female smacks the dog with a towel. It slinks away, tail between its legs, and I am grateful for its sacrifice. 

He taps the screen, turns it over, wipes it with a towel, all the while shaking his head, repeating a word over and over and over. 

I wrap my mouth around that word, my first word in their language.

“Fuck!”

Know thy enemy, right?

…

I know they will reactivate the surveillance as soon as possible, so tonight I need to make moves. They clean me up and leave me back in my cell, where I immediately pretended to sleep. 

The lights go off. 

I can only imagine the punishments my canine ally is enduring. 

No time to think of that now. I’ll be back for him. 

I pile everything I can find in my cell–pillows, blankets, everything–in one corner, and then carefully pull myself up. I am very unsteady on my feet, and tumble right back down. But the guards never show. I have my privacy. 

The red light above me is still lit. But now it is impotent, disconnected from anything of import. 

I blow a spit bubble at it. 

And I climb again. And again. Each time making it a bit higher until I reach the top of my cell which, in a remarkable oversight on their part, was open.

  I hoist myself over. It takes everything I have.

Quicker than it takes to realize what is happening, I am on the floor. 

I landed hard, the wind knocked out of me. I cough. Tears come to my eyes and I am surprised by the howl of pain rising through my throat. 

I clamp my mouth shut. Success means pain sometimes. 

I roll to my stomach. Not being able to stand, I crawl. 

There’s the door. 

Pull it open. Crawl through. 

I’m not sure what I expected to see. 

Walls lined with cells like mine?

Horrible medical experiments?

Or maybe a gleaming, sterile laboratory, with glowing test tubes and bubbling chemicals? 

Some sort of prison, certainly. 

I discover nothing of the sort. Carpet, soft under my hands and knees, is the first thing I notice. 

Family photos, framed, hang on the walls above me. 

Down the hall, a kitchen with a sink, dirty dishes. 

I crawl further. Compelled onward by a strange mix of confusion and foreboding. 

A large couch looms into view as I round the corner. Pale moonlight behind the blinds on the windows. 

Something stirs on the couch. 

I crawl closer. 

I strain to look up to the seat of the couch, difficult because of the size of this particular couch–

In a blur of hair and floppy ears, it jumps down on me.

The dog! Suddenly I am under its legs, he's stomping around me and over me, licking my face, and, unable to help it, laughter peels out of me. 

Then the dog is gone. I hear barking. Moments later, he brings the guards here, tail wagging, grinning with self-satisfaction. 

He has betrayed me! That furry turncoat–

“Look, he’s crawling!” the woman says. “Let me get my camera.”

I am too shocked to protest when they are on me, the guards. Taking photos. Picking me up. 

My parents. 

…

When I grow a bit bigger, they let me take my dog on a leash. At first it’s strange to be lording over my old accomplice, but I must admit, it’s intoxicating, to restrict another’s liberty simply by the measurement of a piece of rope. 

Soon I learn to pull on the rope, pull hard, for the slightest infraction. And if I get a yelp for my effort, so much the better. 

Around that time, I am introduced to a new place. I trade my crib for a larger detention camp, which they call “preschool.” 

Upon my first day, I find this preschool is even more confining than my small cell before. 

“Draw this.”

“Sing that.”

“Say please.” 

“No, you can’t sleep now.”

“Yes, go to sleep now.”

And the dreaded solitary confinement of “time-out.”

The two words I dread most of all, forced to sit still, quiet, alone; deprived of not just autonomy of movement but of protest, of voice, itself! 

…

It seems that the walls of my cell continue to spread wider. Perhaps someday they will spread so far that I won’t be able to see them anymore. 

But the rules, the structures, imposed on me, close tighter and tighter until, perhaps in the future, they snuff out the prospect of possibility altogether. 

And then,  I suppose, I’ll simply be reduced to yelping when my leash is pulled.