In Springdale Town by Robert Freeman Wexler Page A

clicking-whirring. He blinked repeatedly, trying to bring the room back into focus. His vision cleared enough for him to see the outlines of the windows, and as he concentrated on their shape his pallet moved. The end where his head lay began to rise, a slow, ratchety pull; the whole pallet climbed the wall, lifting him upright.
    “Adjustments, adjustments must be made. No one prepared, and so I must crank and strap, fill and elevate.”
    The speaker was a woman. Her voice soothed him, a musical tone not unlike that of Mindy, the actress he had lived with for six months, the one who had been a folksinger before getting a part in a movie about a folksinger. He had left her eventually, though he couldn’t recall why.
    His rising pallet was becoming uncomfortable as gravity pulled at his body, at the straps binding his wrists. He tensed to hold himself upright. At some point his eyes recovered and he could see the woman. She was directly below him and bent over, fiddling with something at the bottom edge of his pallet, now a few inches above the floor. When she straightened, the top of her curly red hair was about even with his waist. Behind her stood a low platform with a rod extending vertically a couple of feet, on the end of which was some kind of control panel and a joystick.
    She looked up at him, and he thought it was Mindy, but with hair red instead of blonde. Mindy though, she was six feet tall. Funny how he had thought of arms–he had loved to watch the movement of her arm as she strummed her guitar. He closed his eyes. She had written a song for him, “only one sky/sometimes in blue and sometimes gray.” {note 18} Stupid to have left her. With her, here, this empty town wouldn’t seem so bleak.
    When he opened his eyes, the short woman was standing on the platform with her hands resting on the chrome sides of the control panel. She pushed a button with her thumb, and the platform elevated, kept rising until her face leveled with his.
    “Better, better,” she said, and tweaked the joystick forward, then left, to maneuver herself in front of him.
    Close, she didn’t look like Mindy. Her eyes were farther apart, or maybe less rounded, and her nose wasn’t as pointed.
    “And now we can attend to preparations.”
    Her skin was creamy, unblemished by mark or wrinkle, and her eyes were a soft blue-green. Surely this wasn’t the face of a torturer? She lifted the ends of a belt from the sides of the pallet and buckled it over his chest, then pulled it tight.
    Shelling gasped. “What is this? What have I done? Hurts...I won’t be strapped–” He couldn’t take in enough air to form words.
    The woman pulled her platform back a foot or so. “Secured the subject for analysis.” She leaned over the control panel and flipped a cigar-shaped plastic rod from its socket and pointed it at him. Holes covered its rounded tip. With a stubby forefinger, she reached down to push a green button. “Begin recording. How many faces do you have?” She looked at Shelling as though waiting for an answer. “How many?” she asked again.
    He tried to speak, he opened his mouth, intending to offer something, but his outburst had drained him of words.
    “Subject refuses to speak.” She pushed the green button again.
    He moved his head from side to side and mouthed “no no no,” but she wasn’t looking. What crime had he committed? This town, his town, he had thought, but if it were his town, it would not have conspired to keep him alone and helpless, would not have subjected him to the giant policeman and his partner, this crazed midget woman with her straps and platform and buttons.

18
    With the jelly limiting visibility, I was right over Sammy before I saw her. She hovered a foot or so below, face down. At first I thought she had lost consciousness, but her hands flapped every few seconds, slow, water-treading movements. She appeared to be watching something. I stroked downward. It took a lot of strokes to reach her.