Loose Lips (Tumblr Original)

“I’m sorry, Ms. Favreau, there’s really nothing else that can be done. You’ve clearly been privy to far too much confidential information—information of which you had no need, and which currently makes you… well, how shall I say it? A target for the enemy. And, I might add, a very attractive one at that…”

My heart sank as the colonel’s clipped words hammered home the magnitude of my predicament. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen! All I knew was that one day, perhaps a day after I’d been scrolling aimlessly through stupid, now-stale Area 51 memes and conspiracy theory forums, I started getting all these weird emails full of military jargon and mysterious codes. At first it had seemed like a prank, or spam, or something equally stupid. I’d laughed about it as such with my new boyfriend, Arthur. But after the first sleek, black governmental car had pulled up to my little apartment one grey afternoon, I’d known something serious was up.

And here I was now—wherever “here” actually was. The grimly silent personnel who’d escorted me here had divulged not a hint as to where they were taking me, and all I could guess was that I must be lodged in some top-secret military base. I’d told my interrogators time and again that I didn’t understand what those emails said, but of course, the very fact that they showed as read in my inbox was damning in and of itself, regardless of what I protested…

Fear pulsed through me as I dragged my attention back to what the colonel was saying, only to hear this: “The first of the two options is unfortunately the most costly and least secure—namely, you would remain under our custody for the foreseeable future, or at least until circumstances demonstrate that the knowledge you may have gained is no longer of a classified nature. This is, admittedly, undesirable as it may be as much as several decades until this occurs.”

I shook my head wildly, my voice rising in anxiety. “Decades?! But- Sir, I mean- I can’t do that! I’ve got family—a boyfriend—my yoga class! I’ve got a cat and a job and everything!” But he barely even looked up from the memo before him. “The second option is of course rather more promising, as it would allow us to ensure that no sensitive information is retained in your mind. This would allow you to return to civilian life in as little as two weeks, I believe. Does this seem to be more appealing to you, Miss Favreau?”

Hell, yes. I didn’t know what process I’d have to go through to ensure I didn’t have any sensitive information, but I assumed it would probably be a stack of paperwork, a full-body search, and maybe a cross-examination—which was a damn sight better than staying in a military base for the next forty years! Who wouldn’t take them up on the second option, anyway?

***

“No, please, no!” My protests, tinged with hysteria, echoed off the walls of this sterile, blindingly white room. Three nurses, faces inscrutable behind their masks, were stripping me of every bit of clothing and jewelry with ruthless efficiency. I gulped back my growing panic as I stood, now stark naked, watching everything that could remind me of my old life being whisked brusquely away. Maybe this was all just in preparation for a super-thorough body search?

But then they pushed me onto a glistening white table, and I felt my limbs being pulled down, cuffed, drawn tightly behind me. Oh, God, no. I was trapped, pinned here naked like a specimen for dissection… I stifled a scream, hoping against hope that I was missing something, that any second they would take pity and tell me what was going on. “Please, someone, tell me what’s going to happen,” I called desperately, struggling vainly in my bonds. “Anyone? Please?!”

To my surprise, one of the nurses paused in her work and, motioning the other two out of the room, bent her head toward mine. I quailed under the impassive, glittering eyes observing me above the inscrutable mask. “So, you want to know what’s going to happen, Megan?” I shivered as her cold words cut into me. “How do you know-”

She laid a gloved hand imperiously over my mouth. “Hush. I’ll tell you what will happen. You’re going to be wiped, Megan. Wiped clean of all that sensitive information. ‘Loose lips sink ships,’ you know - and we simply can’t have that. Don’t worry, though—wiping’s not really painful.” My eyes wobbled, my trembling lips bubbling with questions that struggled against her silencing hand. Wiped? Like, a sponge bath? Or something more…? No, no, no, that’s just a sci-fi film thing!

“First to go will be your memories,” she remarked coolly, staring impassively down into my widening eyes. “Your memories since arriving here. Your last birthday. Your high school graduation. Your first kiss. The time you first rode a bike. The names of all the colors. Your earliest memory of your parents… And even, at the very last… your own name. All gone—for good.”

I struggled anew as the horror of her words seized me, but the cuffs were taut and unyielding. “Next will go your reasoning and intelligence,” she continued, seemingly unperturbed by my struggles. “Algebra, abstract thought, reading comprehension, language, spatial reasoning… It’s all going to go, Megan. All of it.”

I was shaking in terror now, appalled at how this woman could speak so calmly of essentially turning me into a- a- a brain-dead thing. When, oh when would I wake up from this hideous nightmare?

And still she continued serenely, her other gloved hand brushing back the stray hairs from my face. “And last to go, of course, will be your coordination and muscular control. Dancing? Gone. Crocheting? Never again. Talking—of course not. Walking? Not a chance. Feeding yourself—unnecessary. Potty training—just why? We have to be thorough, you know. And until you’re a completely blank slate, there’s no telling what might be hidden away in there…”

I fought with every ounce of strength now, horror-struck at the picture this nurse was painting. “Oh, no need to panic!” she told me, smiling demurely. “We’re really quite gentle with our wiped patients. You’ll be cared for just as well as any other infant, both here and when we transfer you to a home for mentally handicapped people—many just like yourself. Your caregivers will dress you, feed you, nurse you, put you to sleep, change your filthy diapers a few times a day… It’s really quite an attractive life, Megan. I’m sure you’ll learn to love the formula and the diapers and the helplessness—though of course you won’t have a word for it, or even the idea. It’ll just be a lovely blur of softness and warmth, as you become a brainless, mindless infant utterly dependent on a caregiver to fill your every need…”

She lifted her hand at last, and within a matter of seconds was busily securing what I now knew to be the first of many diapers around me. Yet as the curses and shrieks of horror I hurled at her reechoed through this chamber of horrors, she seemed only to grow more pleased. “Hmm, perhaps I shouldn’t have told you all that, Megan,” she said, her hand now patting the thick padding between my legs. “But you did ask for it, after all…” Her eyes bored into mine, and I thought, for one terrifying moment, that I recognized her.

“Now there’s one last thing before you go into the wiper,” she said quietly, slipping a large rubbery bulb between my teeth. Efficient as ever, not one minute later she’d buckled what I now understood was a gag tightly around my head and begun to inflate it, one sadistic pump at a time, as my cheeks swelled and my screams were ruthlessly sealed away. “You might appreciate knowing that it was me who set you up for this, Megan, who framed you as this loose-lipped national security threat. Such a shame that you’ll never be able to tell anyone, isn’t it? Or that you’ll never again be able to fuck my dear Arthur.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she gave the bulb one final pain-inducing squeeze. “God, I’m going to enjoy watching your brain melt, seeing your eyes go blank, listening as you fill your first diaper with shit… Because there’s nothing more wonderful than turning the bitch who stole Arthur away from me into a brainless, helpless bimbo.”

Oh. Christ. I knew her now. I’d seen those cold eyes in Arthur’s photos, heard him speak of her as his “wacko ex”. And as my eyes dilated in horror, as the full weight of my situation bore down on me, all I could do was stare helplessly, mutely, up into this woman’s pitiless eyes. I was trapped. And my lips, whether or not they’d ever been “loose” in the first place, were well and truly sealed… as was my fate.