The Zoo - Chapter 13

Mortimer had lost the will to live. There was no better way to say it—though saying it didn’t matter. Hunger no longer gnawed at him. Even thirst, once sharp and insistent, had dulled to a background static. He refused to eat the food they offered. It piled beside him untouched, perfectly arranged, as though the caretakers were trying to please his stomach aesthetically.

He began to smell strange—an odor both sour and metallic, like iron left too long in stagnant water. It clung to him, saturated the bedding, drifted into corners. It wasn’t like it mattered. There was no one present to comment on it, no one to lecture him. Once in a while, the caretakers came with their white gloves and obscured faces, moving around him with the clinical grace of people who had practiced kindness to the point of automation.

He felt nothing. His limbs no longer obeyed him. His elbows remained half-bent, his fingers fixed in odd angles, his knees locked. He no longer slept; rather, sleep came to him like a foghorn in a harbor—sudden, intrusive, and damp. He slipped in and out of consciousness without ever experiencing real rest. His nights were dreamless, devoid of image or thought.

When he did wake, his arms and legs felt numb and sore from disuse. This only encouraged him to move less, which ultimately made moving harder. It was like being turned to stone in real-time. The caretakers tried to intervene, but there was only so much they could do.

He woke to find needles in his arms or bandages around his thighs. Sometimes, they would try to make him walk or stand. Other times, they just wanted him to lift his arms. They tried to push food into his mouth, and when that didn’t work, they turned it into a fine paste and tried to force it down his throat. Mortimer took all of their abuse, but his behavior didn’t change.

Surprisingly, more and more watchers came during this time. Every morning, they’d line up on the cliff overlooking the enclosure. They no longer talked excitedly, but instead watched on with a somber mood, like they were standing vigil over Mortimer.

One day, a careless caretaker left the door slightly ajar. A light beamed from beyond almost like a beacon tempting him to escape. He didn’t follow it. He had no desire to escape.

Resistance had become a foreign concept. Even existence felt speculative. If he had once been a person, with hopes, dreams, and feelings, he no longer remembered it with any certainty. The images of his life before captivity came in flashes, static-choked and intercut with noise. He couldn’t even remember it anymore.

More caretakers arrived.

He lost track of their number. They blended together—thin shadows in white, always shifting, always too fast or too slow. One day, without a word, they brought a chair that moved on its own. It whirred softly, like an insect struggling not to be heard. They lifted him into it like cargo, his arms dangling, his head lolling side to side with the fluidity of the near-dead.

He did not protest. He did not flinch. He did not even blink.

They moved through the doorway. This was the first time they had moved him out of the enclosure while he was still conscious. It was almost laughable. The key to stopping their restraints was to restrain yourself.

He was brought out of his enclosure, and the outside world appeared sterilized and too bright for comfort. The walls were white and made of metal. The ceiling hummed above their heads, and the floor echoed with every step. Mortimer felt as though he had stepped into another world. This was the world of the caretakers and the watchers.

They passed rooms with glass that wasn’t glass—clear, yet thick. He saw things beyond: tubes feeding tubes, clear sacs holding indistinct lumps. Fluids bubbled, pulsed, were filtered and reabsorbed. The lights overhead didn’t flicker. The shadows beneath them had no warmth.

He did not ask where he was going. He did not wonder. Eventually, they arrived.

He recognized this area. He had been taken here before. The corner where the wall met the ceiling sloped the same way he remembered. The placement of the furniture hadn’t changed. This had been the room he had been taken to when he was ill. This is where they had brought Deb.

Now they laid him on the table. He offered no resistance. His body spread across the surface like spilled wax. They strapped tubes into his arms, wiped his face with rough material. One caretaker spoke while another wrote things down. Mortimer did not ask about what was being said.

He stared at the ceiling. It felt further away than before. Everything did. Even his own breath felt distant, like a sound carried through several rooms.

And then they left.

He lay in the silence, not waiting—because even anticipation had decayed. Something inside him had stretched too thin. His mind no longer had boundaries. Thoughts leaked into hallucinations, and hallucinations into dreams. These weren’t the soothing dreams of sleep, just horrific dreams of reality. He could not distinguish between present and past.

He imagined Deb lying where he now lay, her screams swallowed by the hiss of filtered air. He imagined their child—malformed, unnamed, whisked away like contraband.

His heart did not break. For his heart to break, it would have to still be working.

Sleep came again. Or something that wore sleep’s mask. This time, he did not wake immediately. He wandered. A hallway without doors. A room without walls. Deb sat brushing her hair with fingers. When she saw him, she smiled crookedly and gestured for him the join her, but he didn’t know how. When Mortimer opened his eyes again, the lights were dimmer.

The machines had stopped their incessant chatter. The hum was gone. In its place: a quiet so absolute it seemed to throb. He attempted to move, an eyebrow, a finger, anything, but his body remained inert. Even blinking required a concentration he did not possess. He felt like a marionette after the puppeteer had dropped the strings.

Someone entered.

A caretaker in a white coat. Not masked. Not gloved. He did not speak. He checked the machines, scribbled something on a clipboard, and stared down at Mortimer for a long moment with eyes that held no malice, but also no sorrow.

Then he left.

Mortimer had not expected words. He had, in truth, expected nothing.

Time did not return to him. It did not resume. It dissolved.

There were no days. No nights. Only cycles of light and dark, of warmth and cold, as though the room itself couldn’t decide whether to preserve or erase him. The distinction ceased to matter.

He dreamed again.

Voices from a past he’d forgotten.

People from a life he might never have lived.

A world that he didn’t know existed.

When he opened his eyes for the final time, he was sure of it. There would be no more cycles. No more captivity. The world had grown too thin. One breath, and it would tear like paper. He was not hungry. He was not afraid. He was not even sad. He had become empty in the purest sense—not hollow, but absent.

A sound broke the stillness. A soft, continuous beep. Then silence.

The caretakers returned, not urgently, but deliberately, as if following a practiced cue. One placed a hand on his forehead, still warm, still damp. Another wiped something from beneath his nose. Their masks had fogged slightly from their breath.

Someone leaned down. Scribbled one final note on a document left by his bedside. It would match the tag placed around his big toe.

SPECIES: #1627-C
STATUS: DECEASED
CAUSE: FAILURE TO THRIVE IN CAPTIVITY