Syrup of Ipecac

Sitting pigeon-toed on the edge of your bed, you wonder how or why you haven’t gone mad yet.  After three years of incarceration inside this grey block you now call home, any notion of an outside world seems almost inconceivable.  In the beginning there were news stories about these arrests; in America, the far right Christian policies infecting its people, moving up through Canada and infiltrating Europe and then the rest of the world.  The day it came to London was the darkest day of your life.  You remember the headlines: Homosexuality Illegal Worldwide.  Thousands of people taken from their homes and forcibly imprisoned in industrial-sized experimentation prisons.  The day you were arrested you came home to find a black uniformed officer clutching your shaking wife, while another officer stuffed your possessions into bin liners.  You never got the chance to say goodbye, you were just pushed into the back of a van and driven here.

         The guards that patrol the prison have been talking about the experiments for a while, yet since the moment you arrived nothing has been done about it.  Those imprisoned in Cell Block B knew about the experiments that have already happened to those in Cell Block A. Stories of men tied to chairs, beaten and force fed ipecac syrup to make them sick, while videos of Gay Pride parades are played in front of them.  Other inmates heard about specially-selected guards raping bound and gagged women, who were force fed that same concoction.  Few survived, and those that did were either sent north to headquarters for re-education or succumbed to madness.  You spend most of your day trying not to think about the impending torture.  This is what you are doing right now; it is 11:43pm, and you are lying in bed trying not to think about death.  Your cell mate, a 32 year old man named Vincent who arrived the same day you, is asleep on his bed opposite you.  You remember how he tearfully recounted the story of his arrest, how they tore him from his husband in the middle of the night, how they beat him and cursed their marriage.  You remember feeling lucky that you were unharmed. 

         You wake up the next morning to a blaring alarm and a chilly breeze, and after rubbing your bleary eyes you see Vincent sitting up on his bed.  He doesn’t say anything but he flicks his eyes briefly in the direction of the cell door, and when you look over you see a guard dressed in army fatigues and a woman in a white coat.  You are seized by the guard and thrown into the corridor.  From here you can see over the balcony and down to the floors below.  The prison has five floors; the ground floor where you are checked in and assigned a cell.  Transgender people are Floor A, which used to be on the top floor, but after people started jumping out of the windows they were moved to the ground floor.  In the initial stages of the scheme this floor was exclusively transgender people, then they started to imprison anyone who didn’t conform to gender stereotypes.  Floors B and C are mixed, each cell containing one man and one woman.  It is designed to promote the idea that heterosexual relationships are more harmonious than homosexual ones.  The very top floor is the director’s office, and the experimentation rooms.  You’ve never been up there.  Outside your cell door you are faced with two choices; turning left takes you towards the toilets, but turning right takes you towards the lift.  The lift takes you to the top floor, and this is the direction you are now being marched towards.

         Standing in the lift you contemplate what is about to happen to you.  The silence in the confined space is loud, and you are sweating underneath the thick fabric of your prison clothes.  When she came back from her ‘treatment’ – the scientists never called them experiments - Alice Smith, the woman in the cell next to yours, said that the only thing that made it bearable was talking to herself out loud.  You decide right now that you will also do this.  The lift stops and the guard holds your neck so you can’t escape.  There is no point in escaping; people do try, of course, but they are always brought back and taken to the top floor.  People don’t usually come back from the top floor, or at least they don’t return sane.  You walk steadily and avoid looking sideways.  All around you are doors to rooms that hold inmates after their treatment.  ‘Recovery rooms’ they are called, although no real recovery happens inside them.  You can’t help yourself and glance to your right.  A man lying in a bed naked, his entire body is covered in bruises and vomit.  You hear him groan as you enter through a door marked with a red triangle.  A man is standing in front of you with a cloth in his right hand, which he clamps down over your mouth. 

         You wake up to find yourself strapped to a chair in front of a screen, but your vision is blurry and your tongue feels too big for your mouth.  The man who greeted you only moments ago comes towards you again, this time holding a brown glass bottle in his right hand.  The woman in the white coat hands him a funnel and a thick tube.  He’s going to force it down your throat.  As he advances you struggle, twisting your wrists until they burn against the leather restraints.  He opens your mouth but you bite down on his hand.  He cries out and staggers backwards, but the woman catches him and propels him forward.  He wrenches your mouth open, stuffs the tube down your throat and pours the bitter liquid.  It feels cold as it slides down your oesophagus.  The man lifts away the apparatus, and you can feel the syrup clog your chest and you struggle to breath.  You splutter as you attempt to swallow it, and the screen in front of you is now lit.  This is how it will end.  You begin to speak and hope you might survive this. 

         “My name is Violet Loss.  I was born on the 24^th of January 1987 at 3:07AM.  I am 28 years old.”  Images of women appear on the screen, some are taken from dating websites, and others are obviously prostitutes.  You would never had been interested in them anyway.

         “My parents are Helen and Richard.  They live in Guernsey.”  You feel suddenly sick and vomit.  You’ve never seen so much vomit, and wonder how your body is able to contain such a vast amount of liquid.  After a few minutes your body feels numb and you are struggling to breath.  You start to cry, the urge to vomit returning.

         “My wife’s name is Lilly.  She is 31 years old.”  Her face appears on the screen in black and white.  Your face is now a watery mess of tears and vomit, and Lilly’s lovely face is shining through it all.  You cannot talk any longer, the sickening pain is burning inside you and you collapse.  Lying next to your chair is the empty bottle of ipecac syrup.      

         Once it is over a guard escorts you to your floor, and you move along the wall towards your cell, clutching your stomach as you avoid the stares of your fellow inmates.  You notice Vincent staring at you from the doorway to your cell.  You look at each other for a moment, both ignoring the movements of the other inmates around you, and you both realise the same thing.

         “We’ve got to get out of here,” you say once you are inside your cell.  Vincent doesn’t reply.    

         “Vince.  Vincent look at me, we have to do this.  Vincent!” Vincent is pacing now, sometimes in a circle, sometimes along the length of the floor.  He would pace often, mostly during the night.

         “But how do we do it?  How do we get out of here?  Have you seen the amount of guards they’ve got patrolling this place?  It’s madness, Vi.” He’s getting agitated.  You stretch out your legs and rotate onto your side to face him. 

         “What do these people really want from us?  They want us to be straight.  So, if we have any chance of actually getting out of here we have to give them what they want.”

         “But what is that, exactly?” he says.

         “Vincent, you must marry me.”  He stops pacing abruptly.  “That’s what it will take for them to let us go.  We have to do this, Vincent.  I know how much you want to find James, and I have to find out where they took Lilly.  We have to do this.”

         “They’ll test us.  Probably make us have sex while they watch.”

         “They won’t.  They’ll just interview us, monitor us for a bit and send us to the director’s office.”  He is unsure, his gesticulating arms no longer wildly flapping as he speaks.  You are panicking; you cannot have him doubt you.  If only he had seen what you just went through

         “It can’t be that simple?”

         “Why don’t we try and find out?”

*

The director’s office is huge, yet the dark aubergine furniture makes everything feel claustrophobic.   He is sitting at his desk with a face-splitting grin.  You are wearing a cream dress that makes you look like Nancy Regan, and you have a picture of Lilly concealed in your bra.  You managed to smuggle it in the day you were imprisoned.  Vincent’s hand is clutched in yours, and you can see faint moon shaped patches of sweat pooling under his arms. 

         “You cannot imagine how happy this makes me,” the director says before sighing dramatically and looking towards the ceiling as though there are tears in his eyes.  “You are both a shining example of just how effective this treatment is.  You’ve both been very accommodating with the inspectors, and you passed the interview with flying colours!  Look at you, happy and committed and in love.” He pauses, looking at us over the top of his round glasses.

         “Yes, yes we are.  Very happy” says Vincent.  He doesn’t say in love.

         “Good, good.  Now, before I can discharge you there’s just one thing I need you to do.  I need you both to sign these documents.” He gestures to the two pieces of paper in front of us on his cherry red wooden desk. “You must renounce your previous unions.”

         “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” says Vincent. 

         “These documents will act as a form of one sided annulment.  You are effectively divorcing yourself from your previous spouses.” 

         “Yes.  Absolutely.  We’d be happy to do it, won’t we Vincent?” you say.  You look at each other, both contemplating the enormity of what you are about to do.  Vincent shuffles forward in his seat and signs his respective document.  You reluctantly do the same, and you are violently reminded of your wedding day.  Sitting at a gilded table holding Lilly’s hand as you signed the marriage certificate, the faint press of her lips against your powdered cheek.  You hear a cough and are brought out of your daydream to see the director looking at you.

He stands up; he is a small man, you realise.  He doesn’t seem so frightening now.  He leads you both out of his office and continues to lead you through each individual floor.  You see the other inmates press their faces up against their cell windows to get a good look at you.  You don’t look at them.         

         He leads you to the two industrial sized doors to the facility, but you are stopped by guards.  They search you thoroughly, his fingers digging into the folds of your dress, seeking out contraband.  His hand stops suddenly just underneath your left breast.  He feels around for a moment, and you pray he can’t feel the picture sliding against your skin.  He looks at you and, with a whisper of a smile, cups your breast slightly in his hand.  Vincent steps in but is unsure of how to proceed.  Things like this happen a lot, but usually it goes unchallenged.  The guard looks down at Vincent and scoffs, letting go of you and walking over to the director.  You clutch Vincent’s hand again, holding it in yours so tightly your arm goes numb.     

         The doors open and a gush of air almost blows you backwards.  As you step outside you glance behind you, and in the brief moment as your eyes rest on your previous existence you see the director’s grin once more.  The doors close, deafening you both as you walk towards the black car that is driving towards you.  Once you are both in the driver hands you each a manila envelope containing the details of your new life.  As the car rolls away and the image of the prison gets smaller and smaller, you release the breath you’ve been holding and rest your head against Vincent’s shoulder.