The Annihilation of Foreverland

that need help, Reed. I can’t. I won’t.”
    Reed realized the floor was slowly rotating. His view of the Mansion was slightly askew from when he arrived. Eventually, they’d be turning back towards the dormitory and the Yard .
    “Why do you think I brought you here, Reed?”
    “You know I don’t know that.”
    The Director was nodding. He knew that Reed couldn’t make sense of the multitude of memories that crowded his mind; memories they both knew were implanted in Reed’s head to keep him confused, to keep him from remembering his past.
    The Director put his drink on a small table and opened the doors beneath it. He pulled out a small cage squirming with oversized cockroaches. The parrots flapped madly, squawking. Feathers floated out of the cage.
    “You think I brought you here to torture, mmm?”
    “It’s crossed my mind.”
    “You think I get my jollies by filling an island with young boys to torture?” He popped the lid and reached inside. The cockroaches hissed. “You think that’s me?”
    “I don’t know who you are, Director. Like you said, I don’t even know who I am.”
    A wingless cockroach clung to the Director’s finger, blowing air from the spiracles on its abdomen to hiss loudly. He held it close to his face. The cockroach hunched over and went quiet.
    “I like you, Reed. You remind me of myself, all full of piss and vinegar. For all I know, you’re refusing the lucid gear just to spite me, to spite Mr. Smith. And I can respect that. I mean, Jesus lord, you’ve withstood some discomfort, son. I don’t think I could’ve done it when I was your age and I was one tough son of a bitch. You believe that?”
    There was a long pause. The Director turned his hand over; the cockroach clung to it upside-down.
    Reed answered, “Believe what?”
    “That I was a tough S-O-B?”
    “Again, I don’t know you, sir.”
    “Yes, you do, Reed.” The Director glared, intensely. “You know me.”
    Reed turned away. He didn’t know the Director, but that look told him everything he needed to. You know what I do.
    The Director plucked the cockroach off his hand. It threw a fit, hissing and scratching for a grip. He pinched it by the abdomen. The birds jumped to the branch nearest the cage, their beaks jawing open and close, open and close. The Director dangled the cockroach just out of their reach. Feathers flew.
    The cockroach hissed and hissed, and then it ended with its exoskeleton crunching loudly in the curved beak of the larger bird. The Director took a sip of his drink, watching the bird pull half the insect’s body, legs flailing, out of its mouth with its claw, chewing on it like popcorn.
    “What makes you so tough, Reed?”
    “I don’t know , sir. Maybe my father was a Navy SEAL.”
    The Director stepped directly in front of Reed. They were eye to eye, only inches apart. Scotch was on his breath. “Every single boy that’s been to the island has taken the lucid gear the very first time they go to the Haystack. Not one has resisted, and you’ve done it… how many times, Reed?”
    Shrug.
    “Twenty-five,” the Director said. “You get it wrong again, I’ll slap you.”
    He stayed uncomfortably closer, staring. The bird grinding the insect into bite-sized pieces.
    Reed knew how he resisted, but how did he tell the man responsible for all the misery around him that it was a dream that told him not to take the needle? Sounds crazy, but what doesn’t?
    It happened when he woke up in the lab with Mr. Smith staring at him. He clung to a memory as he opened his eyes. It was a girl with long red hair. She told him – as if she was talking to him – to resist. She told him that if he did, they would be together again, one day. It wouldn’t be easy, but he had to resist. If anyone could do it, he could.
    He didn’t know what resisting meant until he entered the Haystack.
    And when his resolve faded, when he considered reaching for the needle because he just couldn’t take it anymore, when he just wanted it to end, he would have another dream.
    Resist.
    The Director, looking as far into Reed’s eyes as he could and seeing nothing, stepped away. He sipped, thinking. Reed noticed the lump on the back of his neck when he bent over for another cockroach, the tracker imbedded between the C4 and C5 vertebrae. No one went unchecked on the island, not even the man at the top.
    “I can’t accept watching you piss away an opportunity, Reed. Do you know what’s right in front of you?