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Send to Friend"This is it," the mysterious voice spoke within the earpiece of his headset, "the final test."
The final test, Keith repeated in his mind, his mental auditory sense, as with his thought processes in general, seemed muddled as a fuzzy numbness gripped his brain. The only thing he felt intensely was the terror that gripped him and curled his stomach, leaving his heart beating frantically. Seeds of excitement, of impending triumph blossomed within, a glimmer of hope that perhaps this nightmare might truly end after all. Yet with it came the dismal possibility that he might not last long enough to finish this test—that the poison had coursed through his veins for too long.
"How much time do I have left?" Keith asked.
"You'll know when you die."
"How 'bout givin' me a real answer this time? Or an estimation at least? Somethin' to go on? I mean, I done everything you asked so far and after all the shit you put me through, I really don't think that's askin' too much."
"Like I said before, you have until the poison kills you," he answered with both condescension and irritation in his voice. "No more. No less. If you complete this final test before that happens, I give you the antidote. If not, then you fail and you die. It really is quite simple, don't you think?"
"Damn it, that's not a real answer!"
"I think its good enough. But if you disagree, then we can stand here and debate the merits of my answer while you continue to die, or we can get started so you might have some hope of finishing on time and surviving."
"Bastard," Keith muttered through clenched teeth.
"I should warn you, though: this test will be much harder than its predecessors. Are you sure you have what it takes?"
"I don't really have much choice in the matter, now do I?"
"No, I don't suppose you don't."
"Then bring it on," Keith said hoarsely, though somewhat firmly, trying to sound more confident then he truly was.
A sudden flash of light filled the room, and in his feverish state, it seemed he bore witness to a blinding nuclear explosion that made his swollen, flaming, bloodshot eyes feel as if they would rupture open as they were engulfed in flames. He grimaced and recoiled with a sharp groan as his eyes snapped shut and he threw his arm over his face to block the mercilessly glaring light as best he could. The light still seeped through his eyelids with an orange-red glow and his eyes continued to ache. He jerked away, groaning louder as he doubled over with his arms tightly wrapped around his face and his temples throbbing madly.
Gradually, the burning in his eyes began to subside and he slowly lowered his arms until they fell dangling by his sides. He winced as his eyelids cracked open. Squinting as his eyelids and lips quivered, he slowly turned toward the room once more, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light's diminishing intensity one step at a time.
The room before him was small, measuring about twenty feet by twenty feet. Each of the four walls was covered by pristine white tiles that gleamed brightly from the light above, showing not a hint of mildew, dust, or discoloration. Across the room was a glass table whose surface had been streaked from a recent cleaning, yet like the rest of the room, it remained otherwise clean and flawless. Upon the table was a beige car seat, where a baby no more than a few months old slept peacefully, comfortably nestled beneath his matching beige blankets.
"What the hell is this?"
"This is your final test. What I want you to do is pick the baby up and throw him through the glass table. After you do that, I'll come in and give you the antidote."
"You're kiddin', right? You gotta be. I mean, you can't be serious. This's gotta be a joke."
"What do you think?"
Keith's voice croaked with a sob. "Look, quit fuckin' around with the dead baby jokes, okay? Just gimmie the real test so I can get outta here." He sobbed softly once more and blinked the tears from his eyes. "I just wanna go home already."
"This is the real test. But if you don't want to believe me, that's fine. You can just stand there waiting for something that isn't going to come until you die."
"Aw come on now!" Keith cried as tears streamed down his cheeks. He swallowed as the reality of his grisly task hit him hard. He squeezed his teary eyes shut and wiped away the tears with the back of his wrist and then peered down upon the innocent baby, who stirred briefly but otherwise remained in blissful slumber. Keith lurched over; his body trembling as he nearly toppled over before he picked the baby up and cradled the beautiful innocent child tenderly in his arms as tears spilled forth from his face.
"Hey, look, I know he's cute and everything, but it's either you or him."
"Shut up!"
"I mean, sure he's adorable now but he'll eventually grow up. Could be a real monster, you know. Could be the next Hitler or Osama Bin Ladin. You never can tell with these kinds of things. Killing him could save millions of lives thirty or forty years from now."
Yeah, or maybe he could be the one who finds a cure for AIDS or cancer, too, you know, you stupid fucked up son of a bitch! Keith wanted to shout as his head swelled painfully and his heart hammered in his chest. Most likely the kid would grow up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between Sainthood and Antichrist, an average Joe just trying to get by like everyone else. But regardless of where his life took him, he still deserved a chance to live a long happy life.
Not that twenty-three years qualifies as very long by today's standards, a dark voice chimed in the back of his head. Don't I also deserve a chance at a long and prosperous life?
Keith lifted his foot an inch above the table and jabbed his toes against the car seat, hard enough to knock it off the edge of the table, leaving behind a few faint scratches along the glass surface. It flipped over in midair and landed upside down, spilling its blankets which lay crumpled on the floor beneath the car seat. Keith's leg then stomped hard against the floor and he swayed forward drunkenly, nearly losing his footing, yet still holding the baby gently and securely in his arms.
"That a boy, Keith! Now all you have to do is toss the baby through the glass and you get to go home."
"Oh shut the fuck up!" Keith shouted through rage mingled with terror and with each emotion struggling for dominance.
"Yeah, whatever, I got all day. But I'm not sure you do."
His eyes peered down first toward the baby, and then he gazed at the glass table. His arms wanted to leg go, to drop the baby into the glass, but they seemed locked together. His legs wanted to turn and walk away from this madness with the baby in his arms, perhaps to get himself to a doctor to see whether or not there really was anything they could do for him. Or perhaps just to find a nice, safe spot so he could at least die with dignity and honor.
The baby's eyes fluttered open and closed a few times. He didn't cry, but moaned softly as he looked up at Keith.
"Either he dies or you do. What's it gonna be?"
Tiny black dots danced and pinpricked Keith's field of vision as his swollen head lolled over his shoulders. His knees buckled and nearly unhinged beneath his now tremendous weight as his body swayed forward, nearly falling through the table himself.
"Every second you waste is a second closer to death."
His heart beat rapidly and erratically as his chest tightened and his breathing passages seemed to narrow. His stomach tightened in agony as a single feverish drop of sweat stung his eye.
Keith's arms trembled fiercely as he lifted the baby high into the air, tightly gripping the baby's chest with one hand and the stomach with the other. The baby started to cry softly as his head, legs, and arms dangled in the air over Keith's head. Keith's entire body trembled from the weight of the infant, and perhaps from the moral protest of what he was about to do as he froze from indecisiveness, unable to either lower the baby gently back into his arms or to throw him through the glass table.
He wanted to scream: Just fucking kill me already because I'm seriously not fucking doing this, okay? But his jaw was locked shut.
The baby squawked shrilly.
Keith coughed softly. He moved his arms an inch forward and rather than being thrown, the baby spilled from Keith's grip. Time froze and Keith's heart sank as he watched helplessly as the infant plummeted. He wanted to throw himself forward, to save the baby while diving into the glass table himself, yet the terror of his own demise kept his feet firmly planted on the ground as his arms fell to his sides and stayed there, dangling limply from his shoulders while his muscles and joints pulsated. During these few eternal seconds he watched with an overwhelming sense of self-loathing, knowing that he deserved to be thrown through the table. Yet in the back of his mind, a dark and ominous voice spoke up: Better him than me.
The glass cracked and shattered like thunder as the baby fell through and crashed against the ground. The black metal legs of the table toppled and fell as the baby lay beneath them, on top of hundreds of jagged shards of broken glass. Both arms and legs contorted from sharp fractures in several places. Deep lacerations serrated nearly every inch of flesh, leaving the twitching, dying infant completely awash in blood, which also stained his tattered blue pajamas a deep crimson. Pieces of skin on the baby's head had pealed away, revealing bits of skull that gleamed brightly from the light above. The baby's cries gradually softened and he began to make this horrible gurgling and choking noises as the blood rose from his throat and poured from his nose and mouth.
"What have I done?" Keith murmured as fresh tears filled his eyes. He fell to his knees. The pool of blood washed over his legs and a jagged edge of broken glass dug sharply into his knee but he mostly ignored it as his eyes remained horribly transfixed by the twitching, gagging pile of tattered flesh over shattered bones as the baby looked up, his eyes now darkened by the blood that filled them.
"It's done," Keith said as he wrapped his right arm around his eye and stifled a sob. "I did what you wanted now get in here and give me the antidote," he rasped, trying to sound firm.
"No."
"Whuh...what do you mean no? What the fuck?"
"You don't deserve to live after what you did."
"After what I did?" Keith was screaming now, his guilt, grief, and panic forgotten as the rage ignited from within. Venomous spittle flew from his lips. "I did exactly what you told me to do, you motherfucker, now give me the fucking cure!"
"You did what I told you to do but not what I wanted," the voice explained. "You had the opportunity to put the life of an innocent child above your own but through your selfish cowardice you killed him and in doing so you failed. What I really wanted was your refusal. I wanted you to prove your moral fortitude, to stand up for what's right even if it might cost you everything. Had you walked out of the room, I would have happily given you the antidote and you truly would have passed my test with flying colors. Unfortunately you failed miserably."
"You son of a bitch!" Keith sprang to his feet, staggering drunkenly backwards as his head lolled and the room spun, danced and rippled before his eyes. "I did exactly what you told me to do, you piece of shit. I passed your fucking test, now quit fucking around!"
"You've proven exactly what kind of horrible, inhumane atrocities you're truly capable of. Sure, you might question it, you might morally oppose it, but in the end you'll still go along with it and excuse it as 'doing what had to be done' or 'just following orders'. You make me sick. You're an utterly pathetic excuse for a man and you don't deserve to live."
Sighing, defeated, yet still feeling the lingering sparks of rage burning, he requested: "Can you at least tell me how much time I have left, now that it's over?"
"Unfortunately I can't tell you that."
Keith hissed and winced. "Why not?"
"Because you're not really going to die."
"What?"
"You've passed my test with flying colors," the voice exclaimed with a sense of admiration where before his tone was one filled with disappointment, contempt, and outright disgust toward Keith's performance. "You've proven your drive to survive and I'm very proud of how well you did."
The sparks of Keith's rage dwindled slightly through this new sense of utter confusion. "But a minute ago you just said—"
"I was just playing with you," the voice chuckled and Keith could almost feel an invisible hand giving him a companionable slap on the back, not hard enough to hurt him, but startling enough and with enough force to push him forward. "The truth is, there is no cure for what you have and there doesn't have to be. Your body will eventually heal on its own. I did stick something in your drink last night but it wasn't poison. I simply gave you the flu. You might feel like your dying, but you'll get better in about a week. I even called you out of work this morning so you don't get fired for no call/no show.
"Had you walked out of the room, the 'cure' I would have given you would be a cyanide tablet because you would have proven yourself to be too soft and weak to do what needed to be done."
Keith scratched his head, still perplexed. "So the test—"
"You've done exceptionally well on the test. You've proven that you at least understand the kind of dog-eat-dog world we live in and that while you might not like it you at least understand the kinds of monstrous, morally reprehensible deeds you must commit just to get by."
"But wait a minute. If I just had the flu, then I wasn't really in any danger, was I? I didn't even need to come here at all. I could've just stayed home and rested and I would've been fine."
"Well, technically yes, but you believed that you were poisoned and that you were going to die so your fear and your survival instincts simply would not have allowed you to sit back and wait for it to happen."
"Yeah, but if I went to a hospital, the doctors would have run tests, debunking your stupid letter. They would have diagnosed me with the flu and advised me to drink plenty of fluids and get plenty of bed rest."
The voice muttered with just a hint of bitter disappointment: "Just like the others."
Others, Keith thought as he closed his eyes and bowed his head with shame, feeling not just like a monster, but a fucking idiot as well. Other potential test subjects who unlike me were smart enough not to fall for this bullshit. "So what did you do to them?" Keith inquired.
"Nothing. They saw through my ruse so I found other potential candidates. You were the forth and I was simply going to give up after you and return the baby to the parents I kidnapped him from. But you left me overjoyed, for finally I had found someone who didn't see through my ruse, someone willing to play the game."
The end
January 18, 2008
January 30, 2008
Authors Note: One of the people who read an earlier draft of this story said that it reminded her of the Saw movies, and those movies have somewhat influenced this story, and the music played at the end of each movie during the twist played in my head while I was writing it. I actually got the whole idea for this story by reading The Secret Test of Character trope on TV Tropes, a wiki that I have quickly gotten addicted to; I wanted to write a story that subverted the hell out of that trope and this was the result. Obviously, a lot of shit happened before the opening scene of the story, but when I tried writing it in detail, it just didn't come out right, and it seemed only right in this case to just focus on the moment of the test (toldin as close to real time as is possible with prose) while giving just enough information for the reader to work out what lead up to it for themselves.