The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 4: Into the Great Wide Open (Parts 6 & 7 of 7)

The TV was a cracked mirror holding up a distorted view of a world Amy barely remembered. After a few hours, it were as though that she hadn't really watched television at all in The Music Box. The screen they had installed in her little room had been nothing but a mirage.

Where had these advertisements been? Why wasn't she interrupted every few minutes with urgent pleas to buy medications to help with arthritis, insomnia, constipation, sadness, shyness, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, erectile dysfunction, and traveler's diarrhea? Where were the breakfast cereals, diet shakes, and limited time burgers made out of reprocessed, remolded, re-flavored all-natural but unspecified meat? The robot vacuums and laundry detergents? The magical dusting cloths and the toilet gels guaranteed to last in your bowl for a month? The lawyers, mortgage advisers, and men yelling at the camera about giving you money for your gold?

The motel room's twelve channels showed an unsheltered world where people got into screaming, clawing fights in front of a studio audience, news casters droned on for hours about a senator's affair, doctor's sold herbal supplement as miracle cures, and bakers battled to make the best cookies for cash and prizes.

Amy spent the afternoon swinging between emotions of anger and fear. She was furious that she had been kept in the dark by the people who were caring for her. And she was grateful that she had been spared from the sickness that seemed to permeate the surface of this world. Amid her music and her books, Amy had been allowed a respite from this obscene culture of narcissism and joyless consumption. Had she never been imprisoned ,she would have grown up in it and thought it was perfectly normal. She would be a twisted version of herself, tainted by the putridness she was watching. But how dare they hide so much of reality from her? How was she to cope in this world now?

Of course, she was never meant to be allowed back into this reality. Even now, it was temporary and fleeting. In another year, she could be living in Columbia or Brazil. What would reality look like then?

She flipped the channel. Sitting so close to the set, she didn't need to raise the remote. She was on the floor leaning against the bed so she could watch with the sound turned down low, while R.J. slept on one of the double beds with a thin sheet over his clothed body. Occasionally a snore would drown out some of the inanity.

The news channel was still treating the senator's scandal like Armageddon, Amy was done with it but stopped on the channel because the crawling text at the bottom of the screen mentioned her. In the corner, a minuscule picture of her appeared. Amy could tell from the shirt with the drawing of a river that the photo had been taken the other day during her session with Dr. Tan. The Agency had probably selected a still from the video surveillance to give to the media.

It wasn't the first bulletin she'd seen. They were run regular. Even some of the other channels made the silent announcement over scenes of TV courtrooms and women jumping up and down, excited to win a new luggage set. She hadn't gotten used to seeing herself as the subject of a report. The little girl in the picture looked so sweet that Amy felt sorry for her and the tragic fate that might be befalling her at that very moment, until she remembered it was her.

Every fifteen minutes or so, Amy became news. Just another fragment of the great noise of the world via TV. To others she must have already faded to the background of their thoughts, reduced in significance by repetition, until her little picture in the corner signified nothing more than the passing of time.

Hunger was growing inside of her along with agitation. She could smell the grease from the wrappers filling the trash. Far from making her sick, like R.J. had feared, the feast at lunch only made her want more. It had merely served as a down payment on other meals to come.