BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Edited by Rowan Silva

He went straight to the far end corner of the area, stooped to reach a trapdoor cleverly camouflaged on the floor, pulled up the handle’s ring, and opened it. He rotated the trapdoor about the hinges and gently put it on the floor on its back. She went to the opening and looked down; a metal staircase was going down. “Let’s proceed,” he said showing the way down with his hand.

“Should I be afraid?”

“Don’t worry. All you see are legitimate types of criminal horrors.”

He went down the stairs and turned the light on. She followed, him holding the handrail on the shaky metal staircase. There was a long corridor which ran under store hall, and a few doors were located along one side. He opened the first door and went in and she followed into a huge area. The floor was filled with large flowerpots in aisles. She could see the remnants of dried flowers and plants on the pots. The floor of the aisles and all the pots were hidden under a thick carpet of dead bees, in the millions. The empty artificial bee hives were suspended from the ceiling over the pots area, aligned in rows.

As he was looking at the empty hives, said, “Have you ever thought why flowers smell good? The land plants evolved to flowering plants somewhere between 140 and 250 million years ago. The biological function of flowers is reproduction, but it is not possible without the help of pollinators, the bees. The scent, a complex compound, emitted by flowers along with color is to attract pollinators. The problem is that bees had lived before flowers, and they didn’t need flowers. So my question was, and of which I could not free my mind, how flowers affected the evolution of bees to make them their slave workers. I posed a hypothesis: the volatile scent, which is a molecular compound, penetrates DNA and alters the biology of the bees. Down in their DNA had been a need for flowers in some hidden way, and when the scent activated, it deciphered the code. The translation in our language: the bees remembered.”

He pointed to the floor, “The yellow and black carpet of this room displays the practice of trial and error leading to the failure of my hypothesis. The vegetarian bees died of hunger, never changing to honey bees. At the end, tired of one year’s testing, I introduced the red-brown vulture bees for revenge; surely they didn’t care for flowers, they attacked the plant bees and took their flesh out from their eyes. I was watching their feast until they killed them all.”

“There is no horror in dead bees.”

“In a sense, you are right only if we are in a false belief that the notion of legality roots in human biology. What if does proof of a certain hypothesis necessitate human samples rather than bees? In that case, the horror starts as you go further to prove your hypothesis in practice. To avoid any debate, how about visiting the second room.”

He passed her while she was staring at the floor substituting dead insects with humans in her mind, thinking of hungry vulture bees. She imagined the large open area before Milwaukee County Courthouse; people running for their lives, climbing over closed fences, angry men following them with sharp blades in their hands. The people, terrified upon reaching the closed gates; streams of blood running down the stone stairs before the courthouse. At the end of the day, butchered bodies left for the night devourers’ feast. She imagined the sun going down, millions of tiny pink specks shining in the streets. Rivers of black charging through the area, squeaking. The rats would drag flesh out through eyes of corpses. The small ones would jump up the stairs licking the clogged blood as an appetizer, the big ones marking their territory so that none dared enter their area of corpses.

“I see sparkles in your eyes,” she noticed he was looking at her, waiting for her in the corridor. She smiled at him. He opened the second door, standing on the threshold. She looked into the darkness and could see nothing but could hear sounds.

He said with a low voice, “Before I turn the light on, listen carefully.” She listened, hearing a smooth rhythm with a relaxing melody, and the sound of a sad chorus.

“It is pleasant to the ears; I guess you have trained some exotic birds to sing.”

“Your guess of birds is correct, but what kind?”

With a smile on her face, she said, “I say you have trained some bluebirds to sing this tune.”

“Not even close.”

He turned on the light. She stepped inside. It was a room as large as the previous one with birdcages fixed all around to the walls. She walked in, looking at the cages with an open mouth, and stood in the middle of the room.

“Crows? Is it possible?” she asked.

“This time my brutal hypothesis has not failed, but been proved in practice.”

“It is beautiful; I don’t feel any horror in that.”

“For us, yes. In contrast, maybe for the birds. Look closer”

She stepped to get closer to one of the cages; the singing crow’s toes were glued down onto bamboo, the feathers of the tail were also glued down to more bamboos at its back so that the bird was fixed in the cage. A glass tube containing a yellow liquid penetrated its stomach. Staring at the bird, she said, “OK, I am seeing a hypothesis in practice. Yet how could you make a crow sing?” He enjoyed her curiosity, went close to the cage, and pointed to a bulge in the neck of the bird,

“All is here, but before I quench your curiosity, I have to present you a brief narration.”

“Since you are accompanied by an elegant soundtrack, I have no objection.”

“The carnage scenery of non-obedient bees relieved me of facing my failure for a few days. The relaxation lasted until some crows chose the remote location suitable to settle down. In contrast to my habit, their day began early in the morning, and with loud noises. Finally, they have paid the price for the early wake-up call,” he stepped to the middle of the room. She turned her body to him, his voice became articulated, and the narration continued in lecture mode. She seemed to be enjoying the performance.

He continued, “Well, another hypothesis was going to be created. The power of their sounds amazed me, I mean in terms of the decibels. Testing with an application in my cell phone, some crows could produce a ratio of 100 in decibel level, the same as a military helicopter. Note that the permissible noise level for an industrial area is 75 for a commercial 55. Annoyed at the error in God’s creation, I was going to fix it. Having visualized a crow as a 100-Watt speaker, I remembered an advertisement on TV. ‘This tiny gadget turns anything into music.’ I bought the gadget forty dollars plus tax; too expensive and too big, it did not work on a crow.

“I came up with a brilliant idea, when I threw a stone at a crow’s head, the whimpering crow did not sound bad. The second room door was opened. Waiting for evolution to do the right thing takes millions of years, for God to rectify his design forever. I bought 150 cages. Crows are cheap: you can find them everywhere and the stupid people in the Captive Animal Protection Society don’t have crows in their listing.”

“Nor bees,” she replied.

“Exactly, I am beginning to like you. Two unrelated evolutionary pitches developed the two-sided vocal cord, the syrinx, of the songbirds resulting in a pleasant performance. Believe it or not, crows are among the birds that can mimic the human voice, so a small fixation was required to enhance their syrinxes: a Gillette razor. I bought plenty, 30 cents each. I divided each one into small parts with the blade at on side. All that was needed then was perseverance.

“I installed the blade into the bird’s throat, piercing half into the syrinx and half out of it. I tried multiple strategies, among them the angle of installment, piercing depth, and then a source of continuous pain. Do not forget it should be a whimpering crow after all. Thanks to the latter factor, the blind crows could sing better. Two hot needles in their eyes and the addition of a low voltage battery for constant burning pain did the job quite well. Voila, singing birds at your service.”

“I am amazed; and all legal. Sorry, but I am still not frightened.”

“A tough one, but I assure you the third room will terrify you.”

“Cannot wait.”

The botanist and the woman left for the third room, and as they came out of the room of crows, he closed the door and turned off the light switch of the room. They walked to the third door; he turned the light switch of the third room on and then opened the door. She stepped into the room and he followed. He stood by her, facing her to observe her reaction.

She looked around, “But nothing is here besides emptiness.”

“Are you sure?”

She turned around, this time carefully paying attention to the floor, ceiling, and white walls, in the end unable to figure out the significance of the room. “What is it?” she asked.

“My third project, this time a real horror,” he paused intentionally for a moment to enjoy of her questioning stare, then said, “You,” There was a long silence in the room, well conformed to the emptiness. He waited for her response.

“You have decided to imprison me here.”

“You are glaring; your sparkling eyes become glassy now,” he continued, “I am kidding, we can go upstairs. Well, that’s what you asked for, horror.”

“Yes, so if you please, leave me alone in the room. Close the door, and turn the light off. I am seeing something.”

The man went out the room, astonished at her unexpected response. As he was shutting the door, he saw her take a piece of paper out from between her breasts. He closed the door and flicked down the light switch, staring at the closed door quietly.

Finally, there was a knock at the door minutes later, which seemed much longer for the man. He opened the door and both departed the cellar in silence. As they were approaching the narrow gap between the hidden and bright sides of the hall, he dared to ask,

“You look sad, what did you see in the empty room?”

“Just an empty room; the twelve-year sorrow of an empty life.”

“There is sorrow in every horror,” he said.

“I am living in a chaotic world of secrets.”

“There is an order in all secrets. That quote comes from a story that I liked to read as a child.”

They passed the gap where the reign of dark subconscious ended. He couldn’t held the question in his mind.

“You’ve peaked my curiosity. If you tell me what you have seen in the emptiness, I will tell you about the ghost in the third room,” He said while they were walking back to the store counter. She noticed someone was dumping some goods at the end of the aisle but did not turn back to see the person.

“You first,” she suggested.

“You are putting me in narrative mode again. Nobody knows how the mind works, the third room is always a possibility, which human civilization has been unable to banish from the human mind. The real horror is the possibility. We don’t know how far a curious mind can go if an irregularity in normal life crawls day and night across the grey matter.”

“What irregularity?” she asked while they were reaching the cashier.

“Your scent as an example. Now that I see your eyes have got their beautiful shine back, and you are in the secure part of the store, I may say so.”

“What’s wrong with my smell?”

“Something non-human which urges a man to trespass the boundaries. As a botanist, years of working with flowers has gifted me a keen sense of smell. Do you remember the last time you came to my store? It was three days ago and we had just a brief encounter. Tonight, before you came in, I felt you. I wasn’t ignoring you as you silently entered. I had closed my eyes to detect each of your steps getting closer by your odorous intensity.”

“So the third room was really meant for me.”

“Well not precisely, as the scent is not of a flower type. I should confess this time your odor is a hundred times stronger.”

“What do you feel?”

“Something strange burns the two bulbs of olfactory up to a part of the brain isolated from language, the emotional; therefore, very inexplicable in words. I say there is in it a vague message of remembering something lost, which like glue sticks to the mind, crawling across the brain back and forth in a quest. Now it is your turn.”

“My psychoanalyst has advised me that the fear of whiteness is the bridge between consciousness and subconscious which holds hidden the secrets of my true identity. Stay on it and do not run from it until you get something. My subconscious has to infiltrate through the total blockage of consciousness. I cannot read the message in the whiteness as long as it is interpreted as blankness.”

“There is a message in whiteness for you?”

“I still don’t know. When you terrified me of imprisonment, your momentarily vicious silence and the notion of solitude in an empty room brought my whiteness anxiety back. You and the room blurred to white for a second. I had to remain in the moment more, therefore, I asked you to let me stay alone in the room in a hope to see again.”

“And what have you seen in the darkness?” he asked with curious eyes as they reached the cashier station and stood in front of each other.”

“I saw who stole the white painting off the wall of my psychoanalyst, hammered two nails into my wall, and hung the painting.”

“Who?”

“I.”

“And then?” he asked curiously.

“After hanging it on my wall, I guess, saw something which was too much at the moment for me to bear, therefore, I took it off the wall and hid it behind my big mirror. The painting at the back of the mirror created the woman in the mirror, an alien with blue eyes.”

“Why did you steal it?”

“He had hung it on his wall so that I might remember a terrible mystery behind the whiteness from the back of my mind. The painting should have shown something. According to my subconscious I was not stealing it because I believed it was mine.”

“A mystery? How can you differentiate illusion from the recollection of a fact?”

“If I were able to see myself at the right age in the dream. This is one of a few touchstones I have been equipped with by my psychoanalyst. I guess that is enough for today’s psychiatry session.”

“I also have a secret to show you.”

He went to the cash register to grab something and came back. “Open your hand.” She opened her hand. He placed the gift in her hand.

“A dead bee?” she said while laughing.

“It is you. After you left the last time, for hours I could not fight my mind to forget you. I had an unbearable urge to imprison you in the third room, to fill the room with your exotic scent in order to decipher the evolutionary codes in your odor and discover the unique biology which emits it. I threw a live bee into the third room on that day. Today I found it dead, this is the bee.”

“Tonight, you wanted to see me in the third room.”

“Yes, the whole thing was just a show for that. You are lucky since no hypothesis came to my mind. Now you show me the secret that you are hiding in your hand.”

“You saw it.” She blushed, handing him the piece of paper. As he was opening the crumpled paper, said to himself,

“Watch out for the scent.”

She blushed again. Still a ten-year-old girl in me. He questioned while staring at the paper,

“A man with a shovel?” He gave the paper back to her.

“A good omen to start the night.”

She went to the end of the hall where the silver bags had been placed. There was a new sign, ‘The main ingredient of Miracle Fertilizer has been enhanced. The price of each silver bag is increased to $25. It is not expensive; think of yourself as part of the process.’ What a strange reasoning to justify a price increase. She bent down to pick three bags from the basket while she felt somebody at her back was looking at her. She turned back suddenly; a shadow ran and hid at the end of the aisle. She remembered the pickup truck parked at the entrance door. The shadow person could be the owner of the blue pickup. She took the bags and walked to the end of the aisle. Nothing was there but the ammonium smell of the silver bags. She went to the botanist and put the bags on the counter.

He placed them into a plastic bag and said, “75 bucks.”

“Oh, I forgot to pick up the ball of money off the floor of my apartment.”

“In that case, a new deal. I will exchange the bags for something that you have.”

“What is that?”

“The piece of paper.”

“OK, if it is worth 75 dollars, I can draw many.”

“Not all at that moment. It is valuable.”

She gave him the paper, took the plastic bag, and left the store.