The Right Thing

When I opened my eyes I found myself in a room I’d never been in and wearing clothes I’d never worn.  It was the uniform of a hotel employee complete with a name tag which read, “Lafayette Richardson.”  What kind of a name is Lafayette Richardson anyway?  Normally this (the situation, not the name) would be more than enough to confuse someone, maybe even frighten them, as was the case with me.  However, I quickly forgot about the room I was in and the clothes I was wearing when I realized that I was looking down on a parade route below through the telescopic lens of a sniper rifle.  It’s not every day someone finds themselves in that sort of situation, so you could imagine my surprise.  The blank I was drawing, however, was very extensive.  I was racking my brains as if I was drawing a blank on the most important exam of my life.   I had no answers, but I was still able to recognize which questions were most important.  All I had to do was narrow down the choices to whichever one was most plausible.  I hadn’t forgotten everything.  I could still remember what are most easily referred to as givens. Givens are the little things that once learned, are never forgotten.  They are those actions, reactions, and reflexes that we do every day without stopping to think about them– when a phone rings, you answer it– those kinds of things.  I still knew what things were.  For instance, I knew what an exam was, but I didn’t have any context as to whether I had ever taken one before.  Despite not being able to remember ever having taken one, I knew how to take one.  It was a very strange and off-putting feeling, but nothing would compare to what I would learn throughout the rest of that day.

Above the window was a placard with the proverb, “Desperation is the mother of thinking outside the box.”   What a load of crap.  Sure, I was desperate, but for what?  I can hardly think inside the box, let alone outside.  It was right then that it hit me, the realization that without answers, there would be no running away from this.

I was about to begin my search when suddenly I heard a knock at the door.  I removed the sniper rifle from its place in front of the window and hid it under the bed.  I had no idea who would possibly be knocking so I looked through the peep hole.  I was somewhat surprised to see a very attractive woman on the other side.

“Who is it?”  I asked.

“Very funny, just open up,” she commanded, and so I opened the door.  As soon as she could fit herself through she wrapped her arms around me and kicked the door shut as I stumbled backward.  She smashed her lips against mine so violently that it stung, but I would be a liar if I said I didn’t like it.  This is another one of those things you never forget.   By this point she had already thrown her purse on the bed.  After a few moments she pulled her lips away from mine and looked at my uniform.

“Oh, bag boy.  That’s sexy,” she said.  She looked at my name tag and smiled.  “Ooh, nice to meet you Lafayette.  You gotta take my bags to the penthouse.”

“What does that mean?”  I asked, very confused and somewhat scared.

She just continued kissing me, unlocking her lips from mine just long enough to say,  “I’m gonna break your dick off,” in a lustful tone.  Dirty, yes… and very hot.  Obviously I knew she wasn’t literally going to break my dick off.

It had only been a few brief moments since she started violating me, but one thing was certain… she knew who I was.  I could use this to find out who I am.  I had no idea who she was but I wasn’t about to let her in on that.  She pushed me down onto the bed and climbed on top of me.  That’s when it started getting rough.

Her purse was right next to me, so close that I could grab it at any time, but I was trying to be inconspicuous.  I may not have been able to remember a lot of things, but at least I was competent enough to realize how awkward it would be to root through a girl’s purse while you’re having sex with her.  This is why I had no choice but to get rough right back at her.  I don’t remember exactly how it happened but she ended up on the ground next to the bed.  As I lay there trying to catch my breath, she gasped.

“What the fuck is this?” she yelled at me.

“What the fuck is what?” I asked defensively.

“There’s a huge ass rifle under the bed,” she answered.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” I said.

“How the fuck do you forget about that?  It’s a big fucking thing to forget about.  Anything else you forgot?”

“Well, now that you mention it… I have no idea who you are.”  I realized I had made a fatal mistake before I even finished the sentence.

“Oh. My. God.  This just keeps getting better and better,” she proclaimed.  She began to pace around very nervously.

“Hey, just calm down,” I said, but she just kept on pacing, ignoring me.

She stopped and looked straight at me, “Wait.  This is a dream, it has to be… otherwise why would you have a gun when you PROMISED YOU WOULDN’T KILL HIM!”

“What? Kill who?” I asked.

“Ya know, you really are a dumb-fuck sometimes,” she said, quite annoyed.

“Who did I promise not to kill?” I asked, desperately seeking the answer.

“I’m not gonna answer you if you’re gonna be like this.  I swear, sometimes I wonder why I put up with you,” she said while sighing and lowering her gaze to the carpet.  She lights a cigarette.

I sat up in the bed.  I didn’t realize how short she was when she had her legs clamped around my waist, but as I sat straight up in the bed and our eyes were even with each other as she stood in front of me.  She pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and I could see her ruffled feathers getting calmed.  Her face started to evoke a feeling of warmth and love as I desperately searched for the right thing to say.

“Hey,” I said gently to her as I put my hand on the side of her face and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.  “You know smoking can kill you?”  Wow.  She was right, I can be a dumb-fuck sometimes.

She looked at me as if she was expecting me to say, “Just kidding.”  But I never said it.  I could see her face morph from mildly annoyed to bloodthirsty in a fraction of a second.  She slapped me faster than I could blink.  Okay, it might not have been that fast but it totally took me by surprise.  Then, as if she had knocked something loose, a number popped into my head.  708.  What could that have meant?  It had to have been a room number.

“No! I didn’t know they were bad for me!  I thought they were good for me!” she screamed

I started to get the feeling that I wasn’t merely on a slippery slope, but had already started sliding to the bottom.  It couldn’t have been just a random number.  It stuck out in my head for a reason.  People don’t normally remember things like that if they’re not important.  They say curiosity killed the cat, for lack of a better idiom, but it was a risk I was willing (albeit scared) to take.  This had become more important than a mere search for facts.  That number was the most important clue I had found yet and they would get me one step closer to the truth.  At least that’s what I was hoping for.  I didn’t know what to do or where to start doing it, but there was one thing I did know.  I knew that I would never figure any of this out if I didn’t do something.  I had to get rid of the girl somehow.  I looked at her and swallowed my pride.  She pulled a drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke directly in my face.

“Breathe in the cancer, asshole.  You’re such a dick!”

I started coughing and gagging.

“Aww, pussy can’t take a little smoke?”

I stopped coughing and yelled over top of her emasculating comments.

“Hey, alright!  I’m sorry baby,” I said.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

“You’re right, I’m a dumb-fuck… but I’m the luckiest dumb-fuck on Earth.”  Before you ask, the answer is ‘yes,’  I’m completely aware of how corny that was, but sometimes corny is just whats needed.  She bought every word of it.  “I’m just not feeling myself lately.”

“I’m getting worried about you,” she said.

“Please, don’t be.  I think I just need a few minutes alone,” I said,  “I’ll tell you what.  Why don’t you go down to the lobby bar.  I’ll clean up a little bit and meet you down there in say… half an hour?”

“Okay, but promise you won’t kill him.”

Only God knows how difficult it was for me not to say, ‘Kill who?’

“I promise,” I said.

She leaned in and kissed me tenderly on the lips and even though I still couldn’t remember her, I could feel who she was.  I could feel how much she cared about me and it was comforting to know that although she had no idea what I was going through, I wasn’t going through it alone.  She looked back at me caringly before closing the door behind her.

I sat on the bed, shocked.  ‘How the hell did I just turn that around?’ I asked myself, but there was no time to find the answer to that question.  I got up and cracked the door open.  I watched as the woman walked down the hall, hips swaying.  I thought that she must work out with a beautiful body like that.  Watching her walk away made me realize how much of a fool I was for not taking every possible measure to keep her from finding the gun, at least long enough for me to finish.  I was somewhat upset at the thought that I might never be violated by her again, but these thoughts quickly subsided as my primary goal came into focus.

As soon as she entered the elevator, I left the room.  The number on my door was 609.  With the elevator currently in use I headed for the stairwell.  The hallway was considerably more decorated than the room I was in.  This was obviously a high-end hotel.

The wooden handrails were masterfully carved into designs that would fit right in on the Titanic.  They were crafted with sweeping valleys and designs that looked simply breathtaking.  To the touch, they felt just as expensive as they looked.  My mind was racing a mile a minute, analyzing all the information I had gathered so far, which wasn’t all that much.  The elaborate hallways and stairwells didn’t help me succeed.  I don’t understand why people think it’s necessary to stay at a hotel this nice if it’s only for a few days.  The décor is nothing but a distraction.  It was certainly distracting me.

I then began to get flashes of images popping through my head.  Someone had checked me into the hotel.  I saw brief flashes of memories.  I remember lying down in the back of a car, not being able to move; I remember watching the buildings move past the windows of the car.  I remember being pushed through the hallways of this hotel in a wheelchair, still unable to move.  The last thing I remembered was having the rifle placed in my hands.  I didn’t remember the man’s voice.  I never saw his face.  I only saw his hands; what a great help.

Upon my arrival to the seventh floor I found that the layout of this floor was slightly different than the floor I was previously on.  It took me a moment to gather my bearings and I realized that the only difference between this floor and my floor was the presence of a small set of stairs about fifteen feet down the hall from the stairwell door.  Once I figured out the order of the rooms, I started in the direction of room 708, silently counting the room numbers as I walked.  I found that the nearer I got to the room the more I was filled with a sense of nervous anticipation.

My heart was thumping by the time I reached room 708.  The door was slightly ajar but I knocked anyway just to be on the safe side.  I must’ve knocked harder than I anticipated because the door swung open with a very annoying and nerve racking creak.  The room was very neat and looked as if no one was staying there.  But if no one was staying there, why would the door be open?

I entered the room very cautiously, making sure each step was as silent as possible.  Although the room looked un-touched, the desk looked like it had been used very recently.  I opened the top drawer and found a file folder.  To be specific, it was a dossier.  Even more specifically, it was my dossier.  I knew this because of the picture on the first page of the file.  This document could have told me everything I needed to know about what was going on, but this hadn’t been one of my luckiest days.  That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see sentences, paragraphs, even whole sections blacked out.  I obviously wasn’t going to learn much of anything pertaining to my profession or past from this file.  There were a few items that were not blacked out.  This is what I was able to uncover:

Name:  Benjamin “Benji” Makowski

Date of Birth:  22 August 1976

Place of Birth:  Curtis Bay, Maryland

Status:  ACTIVE DONOR

Finally, things were starting to go my way.  I was one step closer to finding out whatever it is I was trying to find out.  I wondered where I got the nickname “Benji,” which sounded strikingly similar to something one might order from a Chinese restaurant.  I didn’t care what my real name was– at least it wasn’t Lafayette Richardson.

There was obviously no one in this room so I decided to check it out some more.  I looked through the drawers in the dresser and in the end table.  I checked all the closets and cabinets.  Nothing.  I was about to go back to my room when I realized I had forgotten to check the bathroom, so I opened the door.  As I look back, however, I really wish I would have left it alone because in the midst of everything else that had happened to me that day, the last thing I needed was a dead body.

I thought I must have been imagining it, but there he was, lying face down on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, butt naked.  He had a strange mark tattooed on his under arm that sent chills through my body.  I knelt down to get a look at the man’s face and realized this strange mark on his arm was actually a barcode.  I didn’t know what this would accomplish or reveal.  Even if I knew the man I wouldn’t have recognized his face or remembered who he was, but nothing could’ve prepared me for how wrong I was about that.

As I rolled the body around I was met with a face I knew all too well– a face I thought belonged only to me.  In a split second the tables were reversed and I didn’t want to know anything else.  I felt scared and alone.  I felt my thoughts spiraling out of control, but then I remembered the girl I was supposed to meet in the hotel bar.  I left the room and never looked back.  I found myself running towards the elevator as if being chased.  I was being chased thought, but I didn’t know what was chasing me.  I got into the elevator and pushed the close door button repeatedly.

The elevator ride allowed me the silence to think about everything; a lot of good that’s done for me.  It seemed like an eternity before I finally reached the lobby.  The parade was still in full bore outside and the lobby was cluttered with people.   I found my way to the bar and walked inside.  Finally, I saw the girl sitting alone and I started towards her.  Suddenly out of nowhere a man walked up to her and put his hand on her back.  She hugged him and they began to kiss.  I thought she loved me.  As they spun around I could see clearly why this was happening.

It was the second time today I had seen my face on someone else and I became overcome with a feeling of intense frustration.  Everything was going wrong.  I thought she loved me.  His face, however, was what betrayed him.  He couldn’t keep his excitement back.  He knew who she was.  She was just as much of a pawn in this as I was.

I grabbed a hat from the coat rack at the bar’s entrance and found a seat within earshot of the two.  Luckily, they didn’t see me.

“So did ya miss me?” he said.

“It hasn’t been that long,” she responded.

“Sorry anyway, I had to take care of some company business. We’re about to get senate approval for our next project,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever,” she said.

“It’s kind of a big deal,” he said.

“Okay,” she said in a very un-enthusiastic tone.

“You have no idea the breakthroughs in medic… wait, here he comes,” he said.  She looked over to the television.  ”I had to get rid of one of them, ya know.  He got a hold of my dossier somehow,” he said.  What was he talking about?  I watched as she looked at him, fearful, as he simply continued watching the parade.  He took no notice to her.

I was about to get up and get some answers, but something on the television caught my eye.  Parade coverage.  I watched as the float of Senator William McCoy approached the cameras.  The TV announcers told of his achievements in helping to combat poverty and improve state schools.  What they revealed next would prove to be the most important piece of information yet and the puzzle pieces began falling into place.

Senator Willy McCoy apparently led a group of congressmen who opposed a bill that aimed to make experimentation on the human genome a lawful practice.  It was a bill that would make human cloning legal.  I looked down to my arm and rolled up the sleeve and I saw a barcode.  Suddenly everything fell into place.  Everything made sense.  I was a clone.  I was supposed to kill the senator.  I decided enough was enough.  I was sick of the tables constantly turning on me that day, but now it was different.  This was my time to turn the tables.  It was time to think outside the box.  That proverb in my room wasn’t completely useless after all.  I didn’t know what I was going to do.  I was making it up as I went along.

As the senators float passed the hotel I could tell he was getting nervous.  No one had shot him yet.  I got up and walked over to the bar.  I grabbed an empty beer bottle and held it firmly in my hand as I walked toward Benjamin, Benji, the guy who I was a clone of.  I hadn’t decided what I was gonna do when he turned around and saw me.  There was a several second pause where we both stared at each other and realized that only one of us would walk away.  This wasn’t about pride or greed.  This wasn’t about embarrassment or failure.  This wasn’t about good or evil.  It simply came down to a matter of want.  The person who would walk away from this would be the person who wanted to live more than the other.

The sound of the bottle breaking against the aged wooden bar brought all activity in the bar to a halt.  This was it, him or me.  In the midst of everything the question arose in my mind, “Am I doing the right thing?” I had no idea to tell you the truth.   I was sick of running.  I was sick of things going wrong.  I wasn’t going to let this punk take everything away from me.  Fortunately, when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose.  I wanted to live, and judging by the fight that ensued, I wanted to live more so than him.  I won… theoretically, but then I realized that I was standing in the middle of the bar with a bunch of terrified patrons all around me who had just witnessed a man with a barcode on his arm kill another man who looked exactly the same as him.  They had watched as I killed “myself,” and no one made a sound.  No one lifted a finger to save him, not even his precious lady friend.  I looked at her and an unintentional tear formed in my eye.

“Goodbye,” I said.  She was speechless.  I felt sorry for her, having been thrown into this mess that didn’t really involve her.  I could tell she was shocked with Benji’s blood drying on her perfect face.  I turned and walked toward the door.  No one stopped me as I walked out of the hotel and into the crowd.

After I had made it a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel the police rolled up.  They would never find me in that crowd.  They stormed into the bar.  I was home free.   I passed the Senators float on the way out of the area and waved to him as he went by.  He waved back at me and a look of recognition registered on his face.  Did he recognize me as Benji?  I may never know the answer to that question.

The senator might not ever find out about the plot to end his life.  He continued on his anti-cloning stance and got the practice outlawed.  However, as I kept moving from place to place I found many others just like me, just trying to live.  I learned that there are thousands of us all over the world and somehow, there come to be more of us every year.  If there is anything I want people to understand it’s that we may be clones, but we’re no different than anyone else.  We have free will.  We have morals and ethics.  We have compassion.  More importantly, we have minds of our own.  The only sad thing about his whole mess is that the senator may never find that out.  He believes we don’t exist just because it is illegal to make us.  Just because we are made a different way, according to him, we aren’t human.  I wonder how he would feel if he knew a clone that was meant to kill him actually saved his ass.