The Vipor Room

by Rachel Chernick

My breathing starts to slow as I sit on the firm mattress. I introduce myself to the room I would spend the next 20 long years. I look up, the iron bars telling me I don’t deserve to walk the streets; my rights have been taken away from me. In between the bars stands the ignorant security guard, rifle in hand so he “can take care of any nonsense.” I look down at my bruised knuckle and rub the same hand over the scar on my right shoulder—a reminder of why I would never be free. My eyelids are heavy with a lack of rest; I’ve hardly slept since the incident. I doze and see their faces—then suddenly, I am back in the moment that put me on this uncomfortable mattress with the ignorant security guard who thinks that I am the bad guy. Hated by my community, I was never understood. It’s been three years since my daughter had been taken.

~

February 15th: “Mark, get me the file on the Starky case, and remember: I am going out of town the 22nd and 23rd, so we’ve got a lot of work to do. And I will remind you, do not come by my house that weekend, we are…uh… getting the floors redone and I wouldn’t want you to dirty them up,” Mr. Bollin said sitting down in his large chair that showed the world he was captain.

“I’ll be right on it, sir.” The procedure was routine. Every week I would work on a new case and drop it at Mr. Bollin’s house that weekend; however, this particular weekend, everything changed. He had meant February 22nd and 23rd; I thought he was going out of town in March.

I walked back to my desk and looked back to see Mr. Bollin with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest, his face was tilted up towards the ceiling and he was mumbling something, he did this every morning at 9 AM. I never knew why, but I never questioned it. Rumors circulated throughout the office that said that Mr. Bollin was a religious man and seemed to be very secretive about it.

~

No one understands. By killing eight men, I saved hundreds. Back on my mattress, I lay with the frustration that I will hold for the next 20 years. A deep voice echoed loudly in the hallway that it was mealtime. All the bars jolted to the left and slammed right in my eardrums. I stood up and followed orders to the dining hall where I received more disdainful looks from security guards. After getting my food I ran into a large hard object. My food was knocked out of my hands and the next thing I knew my back was slammed against the nearest wall and my scarred shoulder ached. I fought the temptation to punch the inmate holding me down.

“Watch it, Tiny,” he said. Ironic, considering I was quite a bit larger and broader than he. His spit showered my face and I noticed the familiar blue tattoo behind his ear, that blue figure that had been branded into my eyes. The same one they had.

~

February 22nd: the day I thought the Bollins were out of town. It started out the same as any old weekend. I entered the pass code to the first gate: 1-2-3-5 and then the second 5-6-7-9. I fixed my eyes on the small door ahead of me. Perspective is a funny thing; when you get closer to objects they usually seem larger, this is not the case at the Bollin house. The house was huge and beautiful but the front door surprisingly smaller than your average door. My loud engine quieted as I turned off the alarm, 9-10-11-13. And then finally the last motion detector: 13-14-15-17, but surprisingly, this one was already off, I paid no attention to it. I never understood these number choices; why did they skip the 4, 8, 12, and 16? I quickly walked to the front door and turned the key. I set the file down on the table with the lamp, as usual, when I heard a loud noise coming from the next room.

“God damn it Christopher!” It was Mr. Bollin, I’d recognize that voice anywhere, “What the fuck are you doing?” Another loud sound came from the living room, but this time, it was skin-to-skin contact that made the noise. “Get off your ass and clean this up. The rest of you, let’s go.”

Shit. I wasn’t allowed to be in the Bollin house at the same time as the Bollins. Mr. Bollin was very particular about this, although I never knew why. But I thought they were out of town. I could hear footsteps and then they disappeared. I stopped breathing and looked at my watch. Walking around the corner to ask why they were home, I saw that nobody was there. Large pieces of paper with diagrams were scattered across the floor. I knelt next to the papers; they were pictures of some sort of church. The hair on my legs stood up and a shiver ran through my spine. A church, that’s where Melanie was taken away from me; every time I hear or see that word, my chests hurts.

~

Back on my mattress, the sink interrupts my thoughts. With every drop I grew more and more frustrated.

“Ay, Tiny,” I heard a deep voice call. I raised my head to see who it was. It was the tattoo guy. “Yeah, you, Tiny.”

I got up and walked the two feet to the metal bars, “Yeah,” I said in a tone that an apathetic tone.

“What you doin’ time for?”

~

The living room of the Bollin house, oddly enough, was located in the back of the house. No windows, no doors, and with only one entrance and exit; where did the Bollins go? I looked up from the church diagram. There were a couple of bookshelves, two couches, a desk with a chair, and a painting. The painting was made up of nine squares and looked like one of those games that you play where you move the squares around to make a picture. On the bottom right corner there was a face, on the top right, an arm and so on. I looked at this picture for a while. I recognized it; I had seen it before.

~

“I think you know what I’m in for,” I said cautiously, clenching the metal bars.

He squinted his eyes at me, “I know exactly who you are, you’s better keep the fuck away from my area.”

Area? He has a fucking area? “You’re one of them, you’re one of those mother fuckers that took Melanie away from me,” I could feel the heat in my chest and the sweat on my upper lip as all the rage I’d built up in the last three years went into my bruised right hand and threw itself into the bar in front of me. I quickly regretted my action, I felt the pain spread through my hand but I paid no attention to it and kept my eye fixed on the ugly, hairy man standing in front of me. He turned his head, the tattoo starring at me instead.

~

I walked over to the desk and picked up the tool lying on a few diagrams. I used it to pry the bottom left square out of the painting. It was a puzzle. I played with it for a while until it showed the familiar picture I had seen behind Mr. Bollin’s ear all these years, the tattoo. The carpet behind me slid to the left slowly revealing a staircase going underground. I looked down the stairs but could only see darkness. As they say, curiosity killed the cat, so I descended down the stairs.

~

My breathing quickened as he turned around and we made eye contact, again. “You killed my daughter,” I shouted as my spinning cell turned into a sauna. The hairy man laughed and I stared fixed on his eyes, “She’s not dead, Tiny.”

This time I completely stopped breathing and clenched the metal bars as firmly as I could, I was holding on with whatever drive to live I had left within me. “What do you mean she’s not dead? I haven’t seen my daughter in three years and you’re telling me she’s not dead?!”

“Let’s think about this shall we, Tiny? Where was the last time you saw your Melanie?”

Where was the last time I had seen Melanie? This was an easy question to answer. I had just dropped her off at religious school. When I went to pick her up that afternoon, she was gone.

~

When I finally reached the last stair, I looked back up the staircase to the living room, but the carpet had resituated itself. I was stuck. I looked the other way and noticed a big iron door with the letters V.I.P.O.R. scrawled on it. As I got closer to the door, I was able to make out the familiar outline of the blue figure; next to it was a keypad of numbers. Sweat moving down my forehead, I was suddenly trapped and hopeless. I must have tried a million different combinations of numbers until finally I realized the following: the numbers to the first four keypads on the house all skipped a number: 4-8-12-16. I pressed these numbers into the keypad and the door opened slowly.

For the next two hours, I sat and listened as the Bollins quietly planned, planned to take out an entire Church of people the following day.

~

My memory of what happened next was foggy. But this is what I remember: they plotted to kill hundreds as I sat silently listening. As the eight Bollins talked, I secretly listened and made my own plans. I guess I was successful because they were unprepared. What I did had to be done. When I left the Bollin house that day, I left with an injured shoulder and blood on my hands—blood that didn’t belong to me.

~

“Us Vipors, you see, we don’t like you Christians do. We worship the Vipe.”

“The what? What the fuck is the Vipe?” I interrupt.

He points to his tattoo; “A Vipe, see and we had a plan to make a lot of them Christians in this town disappear.” I stop listening to him and lay down on my bed. Tonight I will finally sleep because I know my Melanie is alive.