Personal Demons

THE CAGES

'Look,' said Albert, 'they're beating up Mrs Tremayne.'

'She's not done anything wrong, has she?' asked Dr Figgis.

'No. Perhaps that's why they're beating her up.'

'Doesn't follow, does it? God, she's making a lot of noise.' He shouted through the bars. 'Hey, keep it down!'

'This thing's hard on my arse.' Albert fidgeted on the rungs. After a few hours they cut into your buttocks and forced you to change position. At least, that was the effect they had on Albert. He noticed that many of the others never seemed to move at all.

'There's a technique to sitting.' The doctor demonstrated, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. 'It's all a question of balance. It took me a couple of months to really get the hang of it. You've only been up here – how long?'

Albert counted on his fingers. 'Let me see, I was still in the bright yellow cages last Thursday.'

'Ah,' the doctor nodded, adding redundantly, 'Sunflower Section. This is Waterlily.'

'They must have come for me on the Friday morning, which would make it about a week.'

'There you are, then,' confirmed the doctor. 'You haven't found your sea-legs yet.'

'We're not at sea, are we?' asked Albert, alarmed.

'It's just an expression.'

'Because that would account for the swaying.' He pointed along the lines of cages. Each grey steel-runged box was suspended by four heavy oiled chains, and shifted slightly in and out of his vision. Each cage contained one person. Albert could count thirtyfour in front of him and perhaps sixty behind. The occupants were mostly silent, so that the only sound was a faint musical tinkling of link against link, diminishing with distance. The fetid grime-filled air prevented him from seeing clearly in any direction.

'I'm glad we're not at sea. That would mean we were going somewhere, and I'm not ready to go anywhere yet. I've still got the shits.' He dropped to the floor of the cage and tried to find a comfortable position by lying on his stomach. 'I thought I might do a workout. Strengthen my abs. Do you ever wonder what these cages are for? Who built them? Are there many more underneath us?'

'Oh, yes,' replied Dr Figgis, authoritatively. 'There's someone just a few yards below you, but you can't see him. He used to have a light, but it burned out. When you dropped your soup bowl last night most of it went through the bars onto his head. He didn't say anything, but you could tell he wasn't pleased. Mr Whitely is seventy-two and never complains, but then he fought in the war. Didn't even yell out when we had the rain of spiders. Everyone else did.'

'I'm quite looking forward to my dinner tonight.' Albert winced and shifted his position. 'You appreciate your food more when you only get one meal a day. We used to get two in Sunflower.'

The doctor moved closer to the bars. 'You know what it is, don't you? In the bowls?'

Albert thought for a moment. 'Some kind of beef and marrow mixture in gravy stock?'

'Oh dear, no.' Dr Figgis shook his head and chuckled. 'If only it was. No, I'm afraid you've been eating something rather more verminous.'

'How unimaginative.' Albert sighed, nursing his knees. 'I'm not squeamish, though. You can get used to anything. Make the best of a bad job. We had nice food in Yellow, and in Blue before that.'

'Ah, Iris Section.'

Just then an anguished howl rose from one of the cages on their left. An elderly man had slipped over, trapping his bony leg between the floor bars. As he fell it cracked with a sharp snap, and was left dangling uselessly beyond reach in its pouch of pallid skin while the old man cried and cried.

'I hope he doesn't think someone's going to come rushing along to help him,' said the doctor. 'He shouldn't be down here in the first place. He and Mr Whitely were supposed to be put somewhere up at the front in Tulip. But I've noticed sometimes they put the wrong ones in here. Like you.' He came to the edge of the bars. 'If you don't mind my saying so, you're far too young to be in this division.'

'What about Mrs Tremayne?' asked Albert. 'She has to be fifty. I don't think there's a greater power at work, you know, deciding where we all go. You just get put wherever you get put, and there's nothing at all you can do about it.'

'Hmm, you're probably right. You have to make the best of things, don't you?'

'I used to get a bit bored, though, in Sunflower. Of course, you had solid concrete floors there, which made life a lot simpler. Keeping your balance, and that. I had a nice bowl of flowers in my cage. Chrysanthemums. Nothing like that here. You can't help feeling a bit trapped in this thing. There's no room.' He stretched his arms out, touching either side of the cage with his fingertips. 'I'm sure this is much smaller than the last one.'

'They do get smaller,' agreed Dr Figgis. 'You should see Crocus.'

'Have you been put there, then?'

'No, but I have a friend who has. Whenever they move you, it's never to better conditions. The beatings get more frequent. And the food gets worse. They don't cook it at all in Hydrangea, which is two after this, and they don't serve it until it's turned rotten in Nasturtium. But someone told me there are fewer and fewer bars on the cages as you move down.''Oh, that's good.'

'Not really. The air is much murkier below, it's harder to see and breathe properly, and because of the bars it gets more difficult to stay inside without falling out into space.'

'Mind you,' said Albert, 'that means you can probably get out.'

'Get out? Oh, you can get out whenever you want. You probably never thought about it much before now. Anybody can get out, whenever they're ready to go. Look at this.' The doctor reached through the bars of his cage and pushed against Albert's door with the palm of his hand. 'See, it's not locked. It's never been locked. All you have to do is take a mighty leap into the dark.'

There was a shower of rust, and the iron grille swung wide with a slow painful creak. The space revealed before Albert was awesome, dark and eternal. Albert gingerly moved forward and looked down. There were men and women vertiginously suspended in cages below him as far as he could see, crushed humanity in every direction, all the way back to his childhood and infancy.

He contemplated the scene for a moment.

'It's an awfully long way down, isn't it?' he exclaimed. 'Probably bottomless. Just space forever. Fair makes you dizzy to look.' But Albert could not resist the looking. After a few minutes, though, he nervously reached forward and pulled the cage door shut until it shifted back in place with a firm, satisfying click.

'You can open it any time,' reminded Dr Figgis.

'Out there. The fall – '

'The fall would kill you.'

Albert glanced uncomfortably between his feet. 'I'm sure it would.'

'But while you fall, you'll be completely free.'

Albert considered the idea for a moment, then returned to the rear corner of the cage and rubbed against his bars appreciatively. 'I understand what you're saying,' he told the doctor, despair creeping into his voice, 'but I think on the whole I'm better off staying in here.'

'Now you know who built the cages,' said the doctor, smiling sadly.