Confinement – by Monika Hocks

He nudged the door. It swung open.

An invitation, wondered Donnie.

He took a look over each shoulder and, verifying he was alone, entered the room.

Inside he confirmed the instruments were indeed evil-looking, but given his singular lack of experience in the operating theaters of the world, they could just as easily have been back-scratchers.

On a shelf beneath the instruments was a laptop computer.

‘Hmmm, wonder what’s in here?’

Donnie lifted it out, flipped it open and hopped up onto the slab to watch.

It was a presentation for something called ‘Project Incandescent’.

He clicked past the introductory paragraphs, then stopped suddenly. The next slide was a split of two images, labelled Subject A and Subject B.

The subjects were the people in the other rooms; the porn addict and the dribbler.

An audio accompaniment began to play.

‘Subject A, Male, caucasian; singular lack of assertive tendencies. Successful application of the cranial device achieved 18:35 Eastern Standard Time.’

The next slide was rather graphic and Donnie thanked whomever hadn’t fed him in the last few days. He gagged slightly…
‘In tests the subject is reacting as expected. Aggression levels up sixty percent, misogynistic tendencies up thirty percent.’
Donnie raised his eyebrows. Good numbers.

The presentation clicked over to the next slide, Subject B – the dribbler

‘Subject B, Female caucasian. Captured in Putsch of 23rd July. Believed to be one of the leaders of The Sisterhood.’

Donnie rubbed his nose and sniffed.

‘Subject resisted all efforts at re-education and we were forced to apply more clearly defined applications of the device.’

‘Oh crap,’ said Donnie, screwing up his eyes.