Christopher Golde
Date: 1st June 1996 Location: Tokyo, Japan
The dimly lit corridors were silent, as the cockroach propelled itself along on its six small legs in short bursts. It would stop intermittently to allow its acute senses to check for imminent dangers, while its long antennae would swirl and rotate, providing it with all the information a tiny alert brain would require locating its next meal.
Suddenly, there was a noise at the far end of the corridor and the small black Blattaria stopped, standing silently, waiting to see what would come. Hearing noises and fearing a predator, it lowered itself to the shiny linoleum floor, believing the smooth, black, flat shell of its exoskeleton body would provide it with adequate camouflage.
At the far end of the long corridor, a swing door pushed outward and two large figures entered stealthily. One was all black with long dark hair and the other all white and similar to others that would prowl the hallways at night.
They approached quickly, and then past, not even noticing the insect lying flat on the floor near the wall. When the cockroach thought it was no longer in danger, it scampered off again along the dark, shiny surface in search of food. It continued to stop regularly, allowing its remarkably tuned senses to maintain constant surveillance of the two large creatures as they moved away. At the same instant that the insect detected the scent of something potentially edible, a door opened at the opposite end of the hall.
The two corridor prowlers spoke in Japanese, but this made little difference to the cockroach’s understanding of the situation, to it, their voices were no more than a mass of acoustic vibrations picked up by the creature’s ultra-sensitive antennae.
“We must hurry,” the white coat said nervously, “I will be noticed as being absent soon if I do not return.”
“Just say you had to go to the bathroom,” said the dark figure.
“When they find him missing the first thing an investigation will want to know is where everyone in the hospital was and I do not want to be listed as away from my duties,” he replied, emphasizing his concern with a frustrated hand gesture.
“Then just get this door open and we can be going,” the woman in black said impatiently.
The second the two disappeared into the room the bug lifted from the floor to make a dash across the corridor. It knew now which door had food behind it. To get there, it would need to leave the safety of the wall and cross the wide-open space to the other side.
As the insect crossed the passageway, the door where the white coat and the black figure had entered, opened again and a burst of light startled the surroundings. The cockroach ran back to the wall and dropped, flat as it could so as not to be noticed. The light was only short-lived, as the door again closed as suddenly as it had opened.
It could now sense that there were three figures approaching.
“Quickly,” whispered the white coat, “when I get you to the entrance you’re on your own, I have to get back to the reception desk.”
The third person said nothing, looking a little dishevelled and disorientated. The darkly dressed woman with the long hair held his arm just below the elbow and guided him along.
“He has been medicated but I made sure they did not give him too much tonite,” said the white coat.
“You have done well and the Master will be most grateful for your help,” replied the woman.
“Of course,” he answered, looking at her nervously, “I would do anything for our cause.”
As they came to the end of the passageway, the insect could sense that soon they would be gone and its foraging could continue. The small creature was now in distress; as its urge to eat was quickly consuming its instincts of preservation to be cautious. It would only be a matter of seconds now, before it would have to dart across the corridor and through the gap in the door, regardless of the danger. Soon, its survival instincts would be overpowered by the need for nourishment and feeding would become its primary objective.
At this moment, the primary objective of the humans at the end of the corridor was to survive and escape; fear dominated all their other instincts.
“You must leave via that door and then follow the corridor to the end, where you will find a garbage disposal exit on your left,“ explained the nervous white coat, pointing at a door opposite to them, “once you are out there, the door will automatically lock behind you. Then climb the ramp and that will take you to a gate left open for the garbage disposal trucks to enter.”
The woman looked at where he pointed and then bowed slightly to the man in the white coat. She took the other man by the arm, guiding him towards the door. The white coat watched them go then breathed a sigh of relief, turned and left through the door they had originally entered from. Although he was glad they were gone, he knew he would have a tough time explaining Akura’s disappearance the next morning.
‘What choice had I,’ he thought as he walked back quickly to the reception desk, ‘the Master would surely have had me killed if I had not helped.’
The cockroach, sensing that all was now quiet, lifted off the floor and scampered eagerly across the hall. Its senses were now consumed with the overpowering scent of the rotting waste and one instinct of survival had now overwhelmed the other instinct for caution. Suddenly and shockingly, its body imploded and internal fluids spewed from the cracks in the crushed exoskeleton armour that should have protected it.
A large rat lifted its head from the floor, holding the struggling morsel in its jaws. It had watched patiently from the shadows, waiting for the humans to leave and the insect to get complacent. She scuttled off along the corridor, eager to feed the young in her nest that hungered for her return.
Outside the Asylum, on the garbage collection ramp, the woman in black led the shuffling figure of Akura towards the gate. As she walked, she spoke on a small short band radio which she held to her ear with her free hand. As they came to the top of the ramp, a dark sedan pulled up some distance down the street and the driver picked up the microphone of his vehicles short band communication unit.
“Yes,” he answered abruptly. A distorted voice obviously that of a woman, retorted instructions to him in Japanese over the speaker mounted under the dash of the vehicle.
” Yes,” he repeated as he squinted and looked out through his windshield.
Further up the street, he could see two figures emerge from a driveway and stand under a streetlamp.
“Yes,” he said again and put the microphone back on its clip, speeding towards the two figures.
As he pulled up next to them, the woman opened the rear door of the car and helped her companion to enter, then closed the door and climbed into the seat next to the driver.
“Now take us to the hotel where you picked me up,” she ordered.
The driver gave a short curt nod and sped off into the dark. As she sat there, she felt the adrenalin ebb away. Her only instinct had been to serve her Master and she had put that above the requirement to survive, as she had done many times before in service to their cause.
Once again, she had done well for the cult. Once again, she would be rewarded with the promise of eternal salvation and maintained superiority among the ranks of the cult’s disciples.
As a human, she had evolved beyond the instinct of personal self-preservation and it was her belief, that she had elevated her species to a universe beyond mortal existence.
“Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear and his mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne and great authority.”
John: Revelation 13.2 -New Testament
Chapter twenty one
The Asylum