There are times when I wish it wasn’t the way it is. When I wonder what it’s like to be normal. Then again… what’s normal anymore?
The metal is cold against my skin. Goosebumps run over my body. I watch as they strap my ankles down. They are dressed all in white, right down to their white shoe covers and gloves. For that matter, everything in this room is white. Nearly perfectly square with no lights or doors. It’s almost as if the walls themselves give off light.
One of them grabs my neck and forcefully slams my head against the metal table I am laying on. There are about four rows of holes down the middle of the table. I can feel my skin trying to sink through each of them. They bolt down my wrists. His hand is still on my neck, nearly choking me.
“What’s going on?” I force myself to say. I am not afraid or even nervous and I know I should be.
The one strapping my left arm down looks at me. The only part of his body that isn’t covered is his face. It is grey and wrinkled all over. He has no eyes! I mean, where there should have been eyes it is just black. An empty black, like looking into the pupils of Satan himself. He simply says, “Death comes to those who wait.”
I’ve waited. Oh, how I’ve waited. After the first month or so I lost track of how long I’d been here. They chained me up to a wall by my wrists. My toes were about two feet from touching the ground. All I had to look at was a clock.
There was nothing special about the clock. Just a normal clock with the long minute hand and the slightly shorter hour hand. There was one thing that I noticed much later. It was the second’s hand. It wasn’t the thin red hand itself, but more like how it moved. It seemed so slow. It was unreal just how slow it went from 51, to 52, to 53, to 54. A minute took nearly a day to pass. That’s how I know I’ve been here about two months. I’ve watched that clock nonstop for more than two months.
The first month I blinked. I let my mind wander to what I was going to do when I got out of here. I wondered what my friends were doing. I thought maybe they were going to try and get me out. Then I started to wonder if they were just playing with my mind and they sped up and slowed down the clock. I knew I couldn’t have slept for two or three days at a time. I knew I couldn’t sleep because of those damn pills they made me take each night. The pills were actually to make me sleep… but I wasn’t about to let my guard down with them around me constantly.
I’ll bet you’re wondering how I know if it’s night or day when I don’t have any windows, right? That’s what you were thinking, right? Well, they thought they could fool me, but I know. I had a voice that told me. She would escape from her little room and run by mine and yell, “WE ARE GOING TO ROT IN HERE TILL LA LUNA!” or she would say, “MY GOD THE SUN IS BURNING MY BRAIN! IT HURTS!”
They thought she was crazy, but I knew better. She was more sane than I at times. After the first month, she stopped escaping. I waited minute after minute, hour after hour, and day after day for her to tell me if it was night or not. Two days later I stopped waiting. I knew what they had done to her. What they were going to do to me.
I heard the clock tick. It was the only thing I heard. It echoed off the walls. My eyes twitched and I winced before each tick. Then I didn’t hear anything. I stopped blinking because I knew that they were going to change the speed of the clock to mess with my head. I wasn’t going to let them mess with my head. They could take my soul, but not my thoughts. My thoughts are mine.
I knew that I had to keep my thoughts hidden. I needed to not let them know I had thoughts. If they knew, they could take them away and I’d have nothing left.
My mind didn’t wander. I concentrated on nothing but the ticking of the clock. After the first day of my second month, I noticed that the clock was starting to go slower. I smiled wider than I had ever smiled in my entire life. I knew their little plan. But it didn’t work! I was smarter! They wouldn’t break me so easily.
I smiled again on the table. Not quite as wide as the original one. This was just an evil smile to show them that I had won. Their silly game was over and I am the victor. The smile was still on my face as the metal probes started into each of my ears. It was still there when they punctured my ear drums, warm liquid pouring out of my ears and down the back of my head into my hair. It was still there when they started to staple my lips shut. The staples bit into my teeth, cracking them down the middle. Forever more my lips were stuck in a sinister smile of triumph.
Finally the pain hit me. My lips were trying to swell up, but the only thing they could do was bleed more. I couldn’t hear anything because my ear drums were broken. I closed my eyes and a single tear rolled out. It was an unavoidable tear of absolute pain. My first blink in about three months.
My heart started to beat faster. My hands started to shake. My whole body started to twitch. I could feel my face getting hot. I exploded into a berserker rage. I fought with every ounce of strength I had to free myself. I tried so hard I could feel muscles ripping and veins bursting. I felt as if my eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. I threw my head back and yelled. The staples tore right threw my lips. I felt my shoulder pop out of its place. My mouth was full of blood, but I screamed anyway.
Suddenly I felt a little pain in my other shoulder. A few seconds later my whole body relaxed. The last thing I felt before I went numb was my tear falling off my cheek. My head fell limply to the side and I saw the white person taking the needle out of my shoulder. A small bubble of blood was forming where the needle had just seconds ago been.
“Drugs coursing through… veins. I can’t let them know I have thoughts… they’ll just… just try to take them away… just like they took my soul… they think… think I’m crazy… I’ll show them. They’re the… crazy ones… won’t let them take… can’t let them take my… my… thoughts…”
Time slowed down. Pain disappeared. Consciousness fading. They had won. I was beaten. They started to leave the room, leaving a beaten and broken child on the metal table. They had finally done to me what they did to my voice. What they did to all the voices and all that could hear them.
The purifying blackness overtook me slowly. A blackness not unlike their eyes. An empty, lonely and desolate place. No one but me and my beast. The beast they try to shield me from. The beast that makes me have the thoughts that scare them. The beast that everyone has but some just like to hide. The beast that is me.
