Wake

Something cold against my cheek.

The sound of footsteps echoing.

Closer.

Closer.

Then nothing.

“What is this?” the sound startled me, the voice grated against my hearing, unaccustomed to hear talking. It has been so long since I heard a voice.

“It’s still alive!”

“Of course it is, why would it be dead? What use could it be dead?”

I could almost identify the emotion behind the voice, I remembered it from somewhere. The first speaker. A hoarse voice like a person… that has been... what? What would make a voice sound so breathless and scratchy? Smoking, he had been smoking for a long time now. The first speaker had the voice of someone who’d been smoking for at least a few years, that was it and he sounded surprised, his latter statement was that of shock and something else mixed in there… something I couldn’t identify. Something I couldn’t remember.

“Alive it can be, see? It squirms and whimpers like a child,” the other man explained, this one was different, he sounded almost too objective, little emotion leaking into his words, blunt, to the point that even though if I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying it still stung.

I felt something nudging my side and forced myself to take a sharp intake of air. It wasn’t like it hurt, but the contact felt foreign, strange, like no one should be touching me. There was a moment where I felt indignation sweep through me, why was he touching me? I hadn’t touched him. He had no right to much me.

These were the thoughts that kept swirling in my mind, until I forced them to stop, I had to think. Somehow when he nudged me with the tip of his shoe it had made this ugly feeling surface, I didn’t know what it was but it certainly caught my curiosity, with a detached feeling of things I tried to think about the why’s and the how’s without trying to return to the sensation of his foot touching my body.

Then it touched me again.

It really annoyed me.

I felt black rage pour into my body.

I cracked one single eye open. It felt sticky. Like I had been sleeping for a long time.

I tried speaking, I wanted to tell him not to touch me, but the words choked up in my throat and all that came were coughs and spit.

“This one just started stirring, so we took it here and see? It’s awake now.”

I couldn’t see very well, everything was blurry. I blinked and it just made it worse, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It wasn’t that the room was spinning or everything was swallowed up in black, it was just the opposite of that, it was too bright, even the walls were too bright, the floor, everything.

Breath wheezed through my lungs.

The men’s voices blurred.

My breath slowed.

My vision cleared.

I let out something between a huff and a wheeze of excitement when I could finally indentify what was cold against my cheek, it was a tile. Polished white. I blinked and felt a goofy, crooked smile press against the corner of my lips.

“Ah, see, what did I tell you?”

“What’s wrong with its-”

“Shhh, you’ll startle it.”

I grunted when I realized I couldn’t move right, my hands seemed to be tied at my sides, something metallic rattled and it took me a while to identify them as chains. I really panicked then. I kicked, I grunted, I wheezed, I trashed, I flailed, I pushed, I shoved. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I. Just. Had. To. Get. Out. Now. My eyes widened in panic. My breathing accreted. A guttural sound escaped my clenched teeth. I wanted to scream. Only wheezes and grunts could come out. My panic overflowed my senses, I couldn’t think of anything but that I needed to have my hands free. The muscles in my back bunched, my arms grew stuff, jaw clenched.

“What’s wrong with it?!”

“It’s chained up-”

My eyes rolled towards the speaker.

“won’t do anything, it won’t be able to get out.”

I let the air out of my lungs through my clenched teeth.

He was short, black hair, beady little eyes, wearing a lab coat. His features were round and childish but there was something cold in his eyes, something in the set of his lips that made him look much older. Skin appeared to have some color, light but still there and his arms were wrapped around his chest, overall he looked relax, albeit a tad impatient.

I stared.

“Well? Aren’t you going to see the new you?”

I stared at him blankly.

Then I slowly came to the realization that he was talking to me.

I blinked.

Reluctantly I lowered my eyes trying to see exactly what this man was talking about. Shock. Horror. What was this? Flesh, pale flesh, swollen, red, infected. Stitches, black strings against the alabaster skin. Deformed. Grotesque. I got the urge to scream, but only the urge came, my panic was silent. Everything was twisted, and to my back, sewn almost poorly as in a parody of my life – I could barely thing. My consciousness was slipping then everything was black.

- - -

Dunno what to say about this one, except I don't think I like it, *shrug*

-P&U