White Rabbit Chapter 35

35.

            The next night Delores laid in bed again, the same as the night before and the night before that. Days, nights, fell like dominos, not distinct, one bowl of mush. She couldn’t wait to go back to school. Her mother told her that she had a phone call with Lady Goodyear and received an excellent report. Lady Goodyear was quite astonished to hear that Delores was seemingly depressed because she had always been so well mannered and happy. Tinges of jealousy struck her mother but overall she was pleased with the report. She tried to pry the truth out of Delores as to why she was being emotionally erratic but Delores fended her off and denied everything. She wouldn’t ever tell her mother she lost her virginity. She didn’t feel her mother was worthy of that information and the thought of the conversation creeped her out. When her mother asked if there were drugs, Delores replied, “Sure. Lots of caffeine and all the stuff you give me. Uppers, downers. To sleep, or not to sleep…Good stuff, mom!”

            “Be serious, Delores.”

“Oh, I am serious mother.” Mother, used coldly.

When her mother asked if there was a boy she said no. Delores didn’t feel guilty for lying because she wasn’t. A man of 147 is hardly a boy. Had her mother asked if there was a werewolf, well, then she might have considered admitting what had happened. No, she wouldn’t have, but might is a powerful word and one shouldn’t deal in hypotheticals anyway, she thought.

            News on television: “Wolf Mother,” the frenzied media called her, vanished. The young lady who was raped by Van Wert and said she would have “(expletive) puppies” seemingly disappeared from her Allentown, Pennsylvania home. She had last been seen at work at Applebee’s. Her car remained in Applebee’s parking lot. Delores sat and drank Dunkin’ Donuts coffee from a bag with her mother and stared enthralled by the news holding her mug with two delicate hands. Her disappearance was on every channel besides the ones that are devoid of news or any value. Even if Yellowstone Park erupted, or Jesus flew down on a winged white horse to begin Armageddon, they would still be airing celebrity gossip, “reality” sitcoms of airheads, dumb pregnant teens or miserable melodramatic housewives (Nouveau America!), cooking shows, glorified karaoke, or the endless over-analysis of men playing with balls. Delores hated sensationalism and even at fifteen she could tell American journalism was swiftly morphing into British tabloid shit molested by Uncle Fox News and forever since bipartisan, but this she couldn’t help but to feel somewhat involved. Maybe, she pondered, she was a werewolf. Alex had told her that the only way to be a werewolf was to (expletive) a werewolf…but not like a sales pitch.

            Her mother interrupted. “Delores, enough TV.”

            “Hardly, mother.”

            “You return to Boston tomorrow and I feel that I hardly know you.”

            “Well,” Delores countered, “try not sending me to private schools that are hundreds of miles away to start.”

            “Delores, it’s for your own benefit that we send you there.”

            “Sure.”

            “You need to be independent…”

            “I need to be independent, or do you need to be independent of me?”

            “Delores…”

            “Mother…”

Her mother was putting a dish in the oven. Her face with the fading looks of an 80’s beauty queen. A ghost of something that had been which was no more, drowning in time, losing to gravity and space ungraciously. She was from a small North Carolina tobacco town. Jan Herding-Marlowe was no Janis Louise Herding. That accusation would never be made. She was once adored by everyone, ruthlessly monopolized pageant crowns and boys, and was in every parade somewhere in the middle on an elaborate float; Princess this; Queen that; Miss Everything. It had always come so natural but now at forty she was aging and unable to stop it, to sit in it and enjoy the ride like in those open-top convertibles, waving and smiling perfectly drifting. She was duped by every wrinkle cream, workout video, diet scheme—she tried all of them but none restored the dream. She was attractive still, slim even, but photographs of her past haunted her and they were banished to boxes and photo albums tucked away in the attic or someplace where no one could look and compare her to what she had been. But Delores! Not so easy to box up and tuck away. Delores made her feel older with every year and every time she saw her young daughter edge closer to being a woman the more she seemed to lose in comparison. Nothing ages someone as well, or worse, than children. She knew that Delores was much more beautiful than her, even in her youth, and as a result since Delores turned thirteen, Jan was doped with jealousy. So with the despicability of a fairytale stepmother, she kept Delores away and when she wasn’t away she attempted to preserve her youth to duplicitously save her own. The dish in the oven was turkey of some kind. Not that it mattered and no difference to Delores, a vegetarian. “So you don’t like St. Anne’s, I presume?”

            “You presume too much,” Delores paused, “And it’s,” searching for the best word, “it’s alright.” She was sucking on a candy cane careful with her words. Delores knew the danger of showing any sort of excitement with her mother. She walked with the trepidation of being in the presence of a polar bear. A stroll through the lunatic hungry lilies of monsterdom. Her mother would likely pull her out by her toes and send her somewhere more intolerant if she expressed any sort of superfluous pleasure. She always seemed to favor Delores in some modest grief, not depressed enough to cut or cry, lifeless, maybe, or perhaps, naïve, immature and childishly dependent. Though she claimed she sent Delores to boarding schools to be autonomous, she was the British government still extorting her growing colonist, wielding control from afar. Each week Lady Goodyear received a long list of rational and irrational demands, via emails, everything from bedtime to clothing restrictions. But Lady Goodyear was a perfect filter.

St. Anne’s was like any other, but Delores’ experience was enriched without boys. She was better able to focus. It wasn’t that she was ever unusually interested in boys that they were an alluring distraction, only that the socialization, kids mimicking soap operas and thriving in the dynamic drama between the sexes, emulating adults, parents, pimps and hos, the stupid games, and the pettiness, premating exhibitions, irked her. Drugs irked her, gangs irked her, hip-hop, boy bands, divas, and gossip irked her. Flirty whores, morons, Young Republicans, and alpha jocks irked her. There were of course catty bitch girls, there will always be catty bitch girls until the world is dust but she didn’t have to socialize much with them. The strictness of St. Anne’s prevented overt hazing. It was absent everything on her dreaded “irk list.” The only thing that bothered her was theology class and that was something she could stomach. Humans pretending to understand God is a joke as old as time.     

            “Delores, TV will rot your brain,” her mother griped cooking. Water in a pot boiled. She had never seen Delores with such an interest in television. “This is your last supper before you go back. Want to help me cook?” No response. “You have to learn to cook sometime you know. When I was…”

            Delores’ mother’s voice was drowned out by a new revelation on TV. Breaking News flashed across the bottom of the screen in a red banner. “Speaking of werewolves, in a related story the secret military prison rumored to exist in West Virginia has been identified and it has been confirmed that test subjects from Project Morphism and other unstable people are being held in captivity. The prison is confirmed to exist a few miles outside of Piedmont, West Virginia in Mineral County in the East on the West Virginia, Maryland border. We go live to Keyser, West Virginia, also in Piedmont County where Bronson Fillmore is standing by at Potomac State College to give us an update…Bronson…” The President’s press secretary accidentally let the cat out of the bag and it pissed all over national news. Reporters clamored on every government official who would know anything and many that didn’t. Project Morphism was exposed as a government funded venture to make people into super-humans but not much more was known. Example: anonymous news reporter to equally anonymous pentagon official: “Sir, do you have a comment on Project Morphism?"

            “No comment.” Smile, wave, hand over face, walk away briskly, get in Ford Taurus and drive. The dipshit didn’t know anything. He was a colonel who worked in veteran’s affairs. The usual response. The press secretary was fired and took a plane to Daytona Beach for a much needed vacation. He is writing a book about his gaffe and about the conspiracy to cover up the murder of Dr. Borger and the ins-and-outs of Project Morphism from Apeman to Sharkman. He knew everything, more than he was supposed to know. His book would say that The Freedom of Information Act is a joke and your government is not serving your interests but rather serving the interests of self-preservation of the current government model. It isn’t a machine but rather it’s more like a fucked-up retarded incestuous animal. Self-preservation is not always a good thing especially when you are not the self. He would never finish his book…his name was Skip Nordvich.

            The young, green, brilliant, but nervous, Associated Press reporter, Bronson Fillmore, fresh out of Ohio University’s prestigious E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, stood by interviewing a top prison official who stood there like a termite-infested log in a loose blue tie and a sloppy, cheap, dress shirt. American flag clipped to his lapel. The prison official was a stocky, older, mustached man with the looks of someone who had spent four years too many in the military doing paperwork or drill instructing young boys into men. He wasn’t educated but he was military and he spent twenty years as a guard and as a captain at a federal prison in Kentucky before being assigned as warden of the prison so secret that it didn’t even have a name. This was Bronson Fillmore’s big chance. His only other on-air interview had been with a podiatric surgeon who operated on the foot of former president Jimmy Carter. “Just don’t blow it,” his camera man advised him before they began. He shook his head. Sweat pooled under his armpits and tickled his eyebrows. Snow fell outside the large window of Potomac State College where they stood in a small group in the rotunda. Christmas break, no students. The log insisted they get the large yellow WV in the backdrop. PSC was a division of West Virginia University.

            An interview is like a tender boxing match. Touch gloves. Stiff jab. “What is your name and position at the prison?”

            “Deutchle, Lawrence. Warden. 232884688.” The log answered as though he had been taken hostage. South paw.  

            “What is the name of the prison?”

            “It isn’t name. That’s pending,” he reminded himself not to say “ain’t.”

“Are you holding test subjects from Project Morphism in this unnamed prison, warden?” Bronson asked holding the microphone just under his chin. Combination.

“No,” the log replied with a clean conscience. Duck.

“Who is being remanded in your prison?” Hook.

“Not test subjects from this science fiction fantasy, Project Morphism,” he laughed rebounding off the ropes. A few men off to the side chortled with him. Project Morphism subjects had been there but were now being held in a cellular biology medical laboratory near Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Had Bronson asked him if they were holding werewolves captive, he might have said yes; there were werewolves there, roughly 220, or 88% of the world’s supply. No, he wouldn’t have, but might is a powerful word and one shouldn’t deal in hypotheticals anyway, he thought.

            “Well, who is being held in your prison, Warden Deutchle?”

            “Bad people,” he smiled again. “Federal prisoners brought to us by The Department of Homeland Security. Well, look at the time…I have to return to doing my part in saving the world from the bad guys. Thank you. Thank you,” he said walking away. A black sedan with federal plates pulled up and waited for him near the exit. The driver and passenger were both wearing suits and sunglasses.

            “Well, you blew it,” the cameraman said to the dejected reporter. “Stick to podiatrists.”

            “I was slicked. He was being evasive!” Bronson complained hopelessly.

            “Welcome to reporting. Let’s go.” 

            “Where are we going?”

            “To the prison. Guards talk.”

            Delores finished the candy cane and her mother was asking her if she heard what she had said. “Yes,” Delores lied, “I heard you.” But she didn’t hear her mother breaking the news that there was a strong possibility that her father would get a job at a bank in Copenhagen this coming year. She was busy googling the prison address on her cell phone. Breaking News: Secret Military Prison Named. The Pentagon decided that not having a name looked suspicious so they quickly named it something short and sweet. Keyser United States Military Detention Center, or KUSMDC, even though it was closer to Piedmont, Keyser had more political pull.  No difference to anyone but the residents of Piedmont who wanted it to be named for them and those in Keyser who didn’t want it named for them. It was of no difference to Delores, who ran upstairs hearing nothing about Denmark, convinced that somehow Alex De Wolfe was being held without trial, without bail, in the freest country in the world, in West Virginia.