Somebody help me. I don't know who or where I am.
Four hours ago, I woke up on the floor of this room: a ten-foot cube, with no windows or doors. The floor is cold asphalt, the ceiling untreated concrete, and the walls uniform cinder block held together with quick-dry mortar. The room could well have been built around me while I was unconscious.
Reasonably fresh air is piped in through small round holes — each probably an inch in diameter — located in the four corners of the ceiling. Beyond that, the room is featureless. Empty, too, except for a glass pitcher of water, a box of Premium saltine crackers, and this battery-powered IBM ThinkPad laptop, with its serial number filed off. The Sprint cellular modem affords only spotty Internet access, the reception certainly not steady enough to allow a precision signal trace.
For what it's worth, the computer is set to Eastern Standard Time.
My jean pockets are empty. When I woke up, I found them pulled out, leading me to believe that someone made off with their contents — wallet, keys, etc. — after I lost consciousness. The knit navy shirt I'm wearing could be Polo or Izod; the embroidered logo has been neatly excised, leaving a two-inch circular hole over my left nipple. It appears that all the tags, size-designations, care instructions have been removed from my clothes. The jeans, at least, have the cut and fit of straight-up Levi's 501s, or some cut-rate foreign knock-off — I can take some comfort from recognizing that.
Head to toe: a navy-blue golf shirt, a pair of possible 501s with frayed knees, red tasseled woolen socks, and a pair of Ace Frehley-style padded silver lamé platform boots — the
ensemble probably not my choice.
I am male, aged in my late 30s, early 40s. No distinctive birthmarks, scars, or tattoos (though I can't see my back). I estimate height and weight at six feet, 170 to 180 pounds. These dimensions — and the fact that I have no clue how to play "Calling Dr. Love" on guitar — likely rule out the possibility that I am Ace Frehley.
I don't know my eye color or hair color. There are no mirrors to consult, no reflective surfaces, no lighting other than the backlit computer screen. My hair is cut short. I have plucked and examined four hairs in the glow of the laptop: as best I could ascertain, they were blonde, red, black, and gray. My jaw is sore and swollen — on first noticing this, I swished my tongue around in my mouth to account for my teeth. Nothing missing, but the effort jarred loose bits of crunched kernel, suggesting that I was eating popcorn not long before I was knocked out.
I have done about all I can do with my Internet access: scoured local and national news sites for reports of missing persons, checked Amber Alerts (though I suspect I am a bit old to be listed), reviewed online research on short- and long-term amnesia. An hour ago I opened a
Hotmail account and emailed a number of federal agencies. I have no idea what their response time is and doubt that they will be able to find me on the limited information I can provide.
Ten minutes ago it occurred to me to go through the laptop's Internet cache. The cached material consisted mostly of sites I had visited, but this "Phutatorius" site — a page I hadn't seen — turned up. A username ("phutatorius") and a starred-out password were programmed into the browser. That's what brought me here. If anyone out there reads this — if anyone has any information on who or what this Phutatorius is,
please write me and tell me what you know.
Am I to believe these other posts? The man who posts here says he used to be a career criminal, but that he's now reformed; a week later he wrote that he had kidnapped Hank Williams, Jr. Am I another of this madman's victims? Or worse, could I be Phutatorius himself, drugged and imprisoned by some enemy from the past?
Help me, please. Tell everyone you know: my email is
stuckinthisroom@hotmail.com. If you know
anything that can help me piece together who I am, where I am, write me immediately — before this computer's battery runs out, and I'm left here in the dark to starve.
