Naked and Afraid

Harold could smell the stale wet air of a men’s room as he slowly opened his eyes.

Three men were sitting on a bunk opposite to his, staring at him intently. He had the sudden thought of being dragged drunk into a room to be robbed or assaulted. Panic took over as he leapt up from the bed to lunge forward out the door and back to the beach.

The metal bar on the top bunk came as a complete surprise to Harold’s skull as it cracked rather harshly against the rusted metal, which only creaked in slight protest as Harold fell back onto the floor moaning.

“What did you do that for?” he heard the old man say as he laid on the floor in pain.

Harold moaned and held his head. “I panicked,” he said. He looked around the small metal room. “I thought I was being raped,” his voice sort of faded off at the end as if he was unsure of whether to make another run for it.

“You’re covered in vomit,” a voice said with a chuckle.

“And you aren’t pretty,” another voice said.

Against his better judgment Harold opened his eyes…

Three men sat on the opposite bunk and looked down on him as he lay on the floor with his head pounding. Harold looked up and tried to remember something about each of them. On television the cops always ask for a description, and he always knew he would remember nothing if that ever happened to him.If he survived this, he didn’t want to sound completely stupid when he told the story.

The first one was a tall thin man in his seventies that looked at everything with sad smile and had resting apology face the rest of the time. He had a sort of beard that was trimmed close and uneven. His clothes were rumpled like he slept in them. He was so disheveled that it took Harold a moment to notice that he was wearing a uniform. It was khaki and had an embroidered badge with a rat on it. The rat wore an eye patch, and there was twisted cigarette between his teeth. The rat was sitting on a brain that had a knife stuck in it. It said “Psyops” on the the top and “Because Wounds Heal” underneath it in friendly gold letters.

Next to him was a rounded man with small round glasses that sat on a small round nose. The rest of his face sort of spread out from there. He was quiet, a bit strange, and didn’t look at anyone directly. He wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform. He wore plain gray sweat pants and a plain gray shirt as if he were trying blend into everything.

Sitting next him was a short man with muscular arms. He gripped the mattress frame with large tense hands. He had dark eyes that glared angrily at the world through a thick nest of beard. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress staring at him intently.

“If this is a ransom, just tell me how much you need, and we can sort it out,” Harold said as he got up painfully and sat back down on the bunk bed. He rubbed the bruise that was blossoming on the top of his head. The room was completely metal, smelled wet and sweaty; and had a small open door that swung in with one of those round handles that you turn in black and white World War Two naval movies.

“We aren’t after the seven dollars and fifty eight cents in your bank account,” the angry one said.

“Where am I?” Harold said feeling rather uneasy, because the answer was most likely awful.

The older man smiled, blinked his eyes and sighed uneasily as he looked at Harold “You are in the Sea Rat. We have a position in what you might call middle management, and we would like you to reconsider your current position at Reynolds.”

Harold tried helplessly to process what the man was saying. Was he being offered a job? he thought.

The angry man next to the quiet one glared at him through his dirty glasses on the end of his nose.

“You work as a middle manager for a company that is currently planning mass murder.” As he spoke, his voice rose in volume and pitch.

The older man put a hand on the angry one’s shoulder. He sighed and gave Harold a sad smile.

“What my friend is trying to tell you is that you aren’t just working for a company that makes a variety of plastics that pollute the oceans, kill sea life, and enter toxic chemicals into our food stream. No, Harold, I understand that you had to make a living. This is about the weapons contract with the government.”

Harold stared at the three men is disbelief. “I work for a company that makes plastic. It’s a real job. We don’t dump it into the ocean, and we are working on a degradable product. It’s single use a lunch container that breaks down in air. “ As he spoke, he began looking for exits. The door was a few feet away, but it was shut. “ It’s not like we can’t recycle it,” he said hoping to buy him some time.

“After the project, we are going to make an entire line of the stuff. They are even working on a toy line,” he said. He had hoped that maybe they were just eco warriors looking to get into the news.

The older man laughed. “Is that what they told you? What you are working on is called a Nerve Agent Dispersal System or NADS for short. The plastics degrade at a specific rate and can be made to look like anything. It’s designed to used with a three dimensional printer system in the field, which connects to their three dimensional Imaging system.”

“People are going to die,” the angry one said. He didn’t so much as look at Harold as look through him.

Harold looked at the three men in front of him uncertainly. “I don’t know anything about NADS,” he said.

The old man looked at him. “We know you don’t,” he said.

Harold decided that perhaps this was the best time as any to make another run for it. He lunged for the open door and managed to round the corner. He felt his shorts being tugged, and he wiggled out of them. He ran as quickly as he could down a small metal hallway; away from the three strange men, NADS, and whatever else. It was dark, so the metal piece that his skull smacked into came as a complete surprise to Harold for the second time and seemed much worse. Blacking out for a moment was sort of a relief. He woke with a feeling of dread, even though his captors appeared to have left a bag of ice on his head.

He looked up to see the smiling gray face of the Captain looking down at him.

“Can we start over again,” he said.

Harold rubbed the growing lump on his head, “fine,” he said.

“You can just call me Captain. He pointed to angry man who stood by the door “And that is Eugene. Eugene gave Harold a nod and pushed the quiet one in front of him. “Oh, and here is Patrick,” the Captain said. “We really need your help and for you to put some pants on. Can you just get dressed and meet us on the bridge please,” the Captain said as he left.