The Ready Guardian, Page 3

the milk—there was, after all, a working sink with clean water—but to consume all of his food-stores on a lark… Daniel risked starvation. Unfortunately, he had all the time in the world to think, but not the freedom to do so properly. His mind was more imprisoned than his body.

  Daniel went to sleep, but this time he did so upon the thin cot in the back, and it wasn’t much different than sleeping on the floor. The woolen blanket scratched him and made him itch. Still, it was better than nothing.  

  He slept through the night and was not troubled by his dreams.

  Daniel’s third day in the temple went like the first two days: a lot of fear, unanswered questions, and new mysteries. It was now confirmed to him that there was a sneaky intruder restocking the refrigerator in the night, for the dastardly machine of cold storage sat before him filled with food and drink. Even more troubling was the fact that the room where Daniel had slept was in direct line with the fridge and he’d left the door open all night—yet neither the fridge’s door-light nor the ruffling, rummaging of the imprisoner had roused Daniel from his slumber.

  Was he really such a heavy sleeper? He’d never been before. Either his mysterious captor was placing certain sleep-inducing narcotics into his food supply or the villain was meticulously trained in stealth operations. A military man? Daniel pondered, but the thought-train led nowhere; there were no obvious clues or visible evidence to be had. If he was being drugged by an army commando, it would have to be one of Daniel’s afternoon or evening staples—if it was hidden amongst anything he’d tried for breakfast, he would’ve noticed the effects yesterday.

  In order to test the narcotics theory, Daniel crafted an idea: he would stick to breakfast foods for a day or two and pay attention to his bodily response. There was another thing he could do as well that might help him draw one step closer to the resolution of his dreadful imprisonment: stay awake, feign sleep, and stakeout the refrigerator. Pleased with his thoughtfulness under such duress, Daniel lazed about for the remainder of the day, munching on some soul-food, having some coffee, looking over the pictures of loved ones in his cellular telephone, and generally consolidating his strength. He even had a nap in the afternoon to help him stay awake through the night.

  Daniel underestimated the difficulty of his plan. Lying in bed with the covers on, pretending to be asleep while fighting to stay awake proved to be a grueling task even considering the stress he was under, and Daniel was forced to climb out of bed several times in search of the commode. It was the only way to keep awake while hiding his true intentions, but in the end it was all for nothing—no one came to stock the refrigerator that night. Perhaps the sneaky stocker knew a thing or two about basic human psychology and had predicted Daniel’s response, or maybe that person was able to observe Daniel secretly and thus could tell he was only faking sleep. Whatever the truth happened to be, Daniel rose on the fourth day feeling hollow and, in contradiction of said-hollowness, very heavy.

  It was not, however, a total loss. He had, after all, managed to stay awake right through the long and cold night; a feat which, to his mind, confirmed the breakfast foods were not chemically-altered. That… or he was mentally-resilient enough to withstand their effects. In either case, Daniel was now resolved to turn his attentions to the characteristic staples of the afternoon and evening, in order to test their potency.

   But he was not prepared to tackle that particular ordeal on the fourth day. He was much too fatigued and depressed. His mind was leeched by a vampiric darkness, plunging him into despondency. In the early afternoon, when his despair produced its first suicidal thought, Daniel pounced upon it like a lion and it, a mouse wriggling between his toes. He was present enough to realize the danger such thoughts posed and how quickly his faculties might crumble if it was allowed to take seed. Forgetting for a first his friends, his family, his world, Daniel turned his attention inwards and reflected upon his state.

  He thought if only he had some heavy food and some sleep he could feel strong enough to resist the dark temple. So he set to it without dawdling and was in bed within the half-hour and was asleep not long after—even though it was still an hour before supper.

  He slept all through the dark night, untroubled by his dreams, and in the morning he found the refrigerator fully-stocked.

  The days passed more swiftly after that and soon they became a week. Daniel tried many things in an effort to ambush his captor but nothing worked. Every time he tried a new trick, the food deliverer did not come. Daniel tried placing a trap on the floor in front of the fridge: he broke a glass from the cupboard, hoping its shattered pieces might crack beneath the invader’s feet and give him or her away. There was also the possibility that the glass might wound the invader, if he or she was barefoot.

  Daniel liked that possibility.

  However, until he cleaned up the glass, no food was delivered.

  Next, Daniel tried placing a cup of water on top of the fridge, hoping it would fall when the door was opened.

  No food was delivered.

  Daniel pulled out the shelves and stacked them inside such that when the door was opened they would fall out and cause a disturbance.

  No food was delivered until the shelves were replaced properly.

  On and on the tests continued, the trials growing in number but decreasing in reason until the point when an outside observer might think Daniel was merely doing things to pass the time. The observer would probably be right.

  The first week ended and soon became a second week, and then it was a month, and then it was more. The time passed and nothing changed but Daniel.

  He was quite at home by a year, and though his thoughts occasionally lingered on the people he’d once known in the life he’d once lived, Daniel no longer looked at his cellular telephone. It had long since died. Having settled into a routine, Daniel started his days off with a big breakfast, which varied only a little day-by-day, and ended with a supper which, likewise, varied little. He liked his coffee with a bit of cream and no sugar, except on his birthday—he always took sugar on his birthday. He spent the middle of his day exercising, reflecting on his life and imprisonment, and testing out new escape plans. There were also a couple of ongoing escape plans, long-term ideas that he worked on just before supper. There was a specific window he liked to bash, hoping its pane was growing weaker by the day. There was a spot along the wall he liked to dig at with a spoon, thinking he might slowly whittle his way through. He also liked to strike the handle on the front door of the temple—but, like nearly everything else in that godforsaken place, the handle was invincible. Anyway, these were only a few of his long-term ideas.

  Daniel became very well-acquainted with the halls and the walls and the windows and the doors of that place. The darkness had become second nature to him; he didn’t turn the lights on anymore and had even unscrewed the light on the refrigerator because it bothered him so much. He still didn’t like the basement, even after all that time, but he did go down there, on occasion, to use the moldy shower. 

  After three years in the temple Daniel began to wonder if he was really alive or if he had, perhaps, died and gone to heaven. No, not heaven—purgatory or whatever that place was where you were sort of… queued up while the higher-ups determined what to do about you. He thought it was a bit like being a small child really, and he wondered if little children liked having their fates in the hands of tall overlords. Not surprisingly, he figured it depended on what fate the overlords chose to bestow.

  “Please God, if I am dead, let me go where my family is and where there are lots of beautiful women—one to marry and others to look at. I promise to be a better person than I ever was before,” he would often pray.

  He thought about a lot of the usual things—what have I done to deserve this and so on—and, on days when he thought he was alive, he still hoped for escape. Sometimes he screamed for hours on end at nothing, at the walls, at the ceiling, at his captor, at God. Sometimes he broke his routine and didn’t get out of bed for t
wo days and other times he didn’t get in bed for three. He wondered, idly, if in the future when humans ventured to Mars, if the journey there would be like this or if it would be worse.

  Worse, he concluded, because they wouldn’t have the food he had. They’d have that… astronaut food—toothpaste, or whatever it is they eat.

  What do astronauts eat?

  1113 days into his confinement, Daniel heard a noise in the main hall and opened his eyes. Was his mind playing tricks on him? The answer to that question was, obviously: yes, his mind had been playing tricks on him since the day he entered the temple, and maybe longer. He could no longer trust in the accuracy of its reports. He remembered a movie he’d once seen about a man who went around talking to people who didn’t exist in places that weren’t there. They hospitalized that man. Maybe Daniel was in a hospital now, and some echo of the real world had come through.

  Sighing peacefully, Daniel closed his eyes and tried to sneak in a few more minutes of sleep. It was nice to relax in bed, having nothing to get up for. So much time for meditation and reflection; he wondered if this was how monks felt. Smacking his lips, he scratched his chest and rolled out his neck… slowly.

  There