Shadowed

“You’re sure he’s not contacted you?”

I glanced around the room at the faces gathered around the conference table. The stern glares from the men and women filling the seats told me a different reality than they would have me believe. They just had a few questions, they said. Wanted to hear my side of the story. 

I focused on the large, fat man sitting at the far side of the oval table who had asked the question. The Toad, I called him, but never out loud. Humor of such nature would certainly be grounds for punishment or dismissal. 

The moniker was accurate enough. The man weighed about 400 pounds and had a large double chin that gave him a very toad-like appearance. His large bifocals were thick and squarish, like the design that was popular in the late 80s or early 90s. He ran the place. I think everyone in the institution, including those in the room, had a fearful respect for the man’s power. His word was God.  

“No, Sir,” I said.

I tried to speak calmly, but my voice cracked. I hated my calmly voice. It always managed to sound fearful and worried. No confidence whatsoever. The cracking voice gives away every secret. Some in the room looked at each other with knowing glances, some scribbled notes, others continued to cut into me with their icy glares. A man in a cheap Walmart suit seated next to The Toad slid him a piece of paper with a note scrawled across, and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. 

The Toad nodded. “Mr. Wheeler, the thing is, we know you’re lying, and we want the truth,” he said. “Now, you are going to sit there and tell us what you know, or you will find your freedoms here at the institution revoked.”

Freedoms at the institution were already severely limited. Revocation meant shadowing and isolation. When you were isolated, you could only move about campus under the watchful eye of your shadow—an agent of the institution, often a resident themselves. Shadowing was a precursor to expulsion, and those expelled where never heard or seen from again. 

Chris wasn’t expelled. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting before this committee. He was just missing. 

“What’d you like to know?” I said, my voice a little more stable.

“How about where he is now,” said The Toad. 

“How did he…why? Why would he leave?” The question came from an older woman with cropped, curled hair, and round spectacles. She wore a high-neck flowered dress, with a charcoal petticoat. Her ensemble looked more appropriate for a 1930s mid-Western school teacher rather than a 21st century administrator of an institute for higher learning.

The Toad and Walmart shot the woman annoyed glances. 

“After you tell us where, Mr. Wheeler.” Walmart had an annoying accent, like a poor attempt at a Mid-Atlantic.

I considered my next words. “Well, to begin, I don’t where he is,” I said. “He hasn’t contacted me….”

“Would you tell us if he did?” said Walmart.

Pause. Take a breath. I shrugged. “I don’t know how he would contact me,” I said.

“You have no cell phone?” said Walmart.

I shook my head carefully. “Nope.”

The one form of communication they couldn’t censor. Course I had one, everyone had one. They were just illegal at the institution. 

“Continue,” said The Toad, as he scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad in front of him. This inquiry was a waste of time and he knew it. 

I turned to the opposite side of the table, looking for a friendlier face. I settled on a young couple seated across from The Toad. One was a brilliant Brunette with a full head of wavy hair; the other, a Straight Arrow with a sharp haircut and suit to match Walmart. The jury of my peers, no doubt. She at least looked concerned; he just looked calm.

“My brother—Chris— sometimes he gets really stressed and then he starts freakin’ out a little. Paranoia sets in. He starts seeing things.” 

“What things?” said Walmart

I looked back at him. “Thought he was being shadowed.”

“Shadowed around campus?” Brunette appeared genuinely confused. I looked back at her and nodded.

“For about the last month,” I said.  

The one thing about the institution- someone was always watching. An army of observers monitored the residents’s movements twenty-four seven, from hundreds of cameras mounted all over campus. Some things get missed. But then of course there were the local reporters—residents who would act as de-facto monitors, reporting every discrepancy or violation to the administration no matter how minor. That’s how the administration kept control- through fear, observation, and punishment.

One gets used to the feeling of constantly being watched. Sometimes you get slapped for an infraction. Extra duty here, report to committee there. But you learn to live within the flow. Only the most egregious infractions are met with shadowing and expulsion. But from the faces gathered around the room, the committee as a whole knew nothing about my brother being shadowed.

“Why did he think he was being followed?” said Walmart.

“Shadowed,” I said. “Not followed. Don’t know for sure. One night he came back to the room all flustered. I asked him what was wrong, and he just jumped up and ran out the door. Was gone until well after midnight. I don’t know where he went. Dorms are locked down after 10.”

“Did he say anything to you?” said Toad. 

“No, Sir, not until a couple of days later. Said he was being shadowed from a distance. Couldn’t be sure, just a feeling he got. I tried to convince him he was just stressed and needed to relax a little, but he couldn’t shake it. Said he needed to get out, he’s not gonna get expelled like the rest of them. I ask him what the hell he’s talking about. He doesn’t say. That was the last I heard about it. For the next few weeks, he went on like everything was normal. Went to class. Went to work. Saw his girl. Then last night, he doesn’t come back after work. I didn’t think anything of it until you called me up here this morning.”

Course all that was mostly true, but I left some things out.

Chris worked the late shift cleaning the administration offices. Not glamorous work, but it bought a few coffees and a nice dinner here and there. One night he comes back from work white as a ghost. Pulls me into the bathroom, runs the shower, grabs my arms, and then jumps in with me — both fully clothed— into the stall. Said he can’t talk anywhere else. 

He said he was cleaning Walmart’s office when he saw one of the cabinets opened. Normally this cabinet was locked tight, but it looks like the lock didn’t engage right. The door was ajar. Inside he saw a folder marked Expulsion. Curiosity got the best of him so he opens it up. Sees list after list of names, expulsion dates, and—get this— plot numbers. As in, burial plots. Residents don’t get expelled, they get killed. 

The whole thing actually makes. See the institution is innocuous enough from the outside. They provide a well grounded, private, affordable education, that promises to yield a competitive degree. Students sign up only to find out that this innocuous institution of high learning is in reality a hard-nosed, fundamental religious cult. Imagine the Hotel California for unsuspecting prospective students. They come in as students, they stay as residents, they never leave. You’re forever tied to the institution. Until death do you part. 

They say that anyone who comes to the institution is following “God’s Will.” So if that person does anything to merit expulsion, they have stepped outside of God’s Will, and are therefore banished from “Kingdom of God.” The only thing is, to the administration, the institution represents the Kingdom of God, so they are within their rights to execute judgment on those who have fallen away. It’s a death sentence. 

Chris saw it all there in black and white. Freaked him the hell out. Well he decides to make copies of everything he sees. Barely gets the copies hidden in his cart and the originals back in the cabinet when his buddy shows up for the end of shift. His buddy knows something’s off, but Chris doesn’t let on. The cabinet is there in plain view, and his buddy can see it’s opened. All it takes is a little seed of suspicion, and my brother goes on the watch list.

Chris is telling me this in the shower, and I can hardly believe it. But I do believe it. Specially when he shows me the papers. So we hatch a plan. I spend the next few days figuring out Chris’s shadow, he’s gonna figure out how to escape without getting caught, and then get his evidence to the proper authorities.

But now I’m sitting here in front of the committee and they can see right through me. Sure, I might not know where my brother is at the moment, but I sure know exactly what he saw that night, and what he intends to do with it. I’ve got the photos of the papers on my phone to prove it. And now I’m just minutes away from my own shadow and eventual expulsion. 

Most of the committee probably don’t know a thing about it, like Brunette or Petticoat. But I know for sure three people that know exactly what happened to Chris. Toad. Walmart. And Chris’s shadow—the Straight Arrow sitting right there next to Brunette.

~ By S.C. Mattson

Photo by Cameron Casey from Pexels