Lightning Shocks
It was pain like I’d never felt before but achingly familiar. It radiated down my body, starting from my head. My head always felt the worst. I hadn’t found a way to describe the lightning shocks I experienced. I shut my eyes, the light still blinding. My eyes bleeding, my skin feels torn and shredded. I try scream, my jaw is clamped too tightly on the mouthguard. I can’t unlock it. Guttural cries and groans fill the room. The noises are coming from me but I am so far away from my body I can barely tell. For a second I’m watching myself from above, I’m watching the way I writhe and groan. I’m in my body, the pain is mine to bear and it is all too much. I’m not my body, I can’t see anything other than white light, I can’t feel anything at all. My eyes snap open against my will. The lights fill them, it's encompassing, it's too much.
The shitty tv screen blares images at me, they leave faded spots in my vision. I’m trying to scream still but no sound comes out. The groans and cries of pain are silenced. It doesn’t stop me from trying to scream, trying to make any sound, trying to prove to myself in any way I’m alive. My body has betrayed me, it has left me to endure in silence. My head is fracturing, I would rather face a gunshot than this. I’d rather anything than this. I can’t see the doctor, I can’t make a sound to plead with him to end this. The pain has begun to increase in my limbs. My arm feels like its breaking, likes I’m being gripped with needles. The other arms pain is worse. The phantom pain makes me want to throw up. I might have thrown up. Everything is a sticky, hot mess and I sob silently. My arm feels like it’s been torn off. My arms been torn off. I can feel it tearing away, muscles and skin breaking. Why doesn’t the doctor stop this? Can’t he see my arm is gone? Can’t he see the blood I feel spurting out?
“Calm down James, you’re hallucinating. You’re fine.” The doctor's voice blares out of the speaker and I try to swing my arm to punch at the source of the sound. I don’t know where this violence is coming from. I know that this violence is me. Have I been speaking aloud? How does he know? The doctor knows everything, he knows, he knows. I fight to take a breath. My lungs feel worn and ragged but I take a breath, and then another. A distant memory nudges me. It’s the doctor, he's putting sensors on me. To track my brainwaves he says. To see, to measure, to record. That is how he knows. “Focus on me James, answer the questions.” I blink, trying to focus on his voice. I feel tears when I blink. Distantly I note how it slides down my cheek. “What is your name, James?” he asks. I don’t know how he expects me to reply. I’m fading from my body, the pain is felt as if I’m merely watching from afar. How does he expect me to answer? My traitorous body has silenced me already.
“James.” The word is half growled, a muffled choked up sound. It takes me several moments to realise it came from my own mouth. My head throbs, tightening pressure and burning heat encompassing me. Bile rises in my mouth, I can taste the betrayal. Everything’s gone. My body, my pain, the doctor. The sickening feeling remains. My own body is not under my control. My vocal chords may as well have been removed when I tried to scream, to beg, to plead. Yet they respond to the commands of another. Easily. Immediately. It is just me, alone in my mind and I am not myself. I am more the doctors than I am mine. I am more hers, I am more Jones’. I have no body, I have nothing. I am a shell that the doctor has decorated. That the doctor owns. His masterpiece.
The light is bright and his hands are soft. It’s the doctor. He’s touching my arm. My eyes are open, my tongue feels heavy. There is no pain yet but I know I’ll feel its presence later. The word masterpiece spills from my tongue in a slurred mumble. I had been thinking so clearly. I had been aware of every thought, of every feeling my mind could experience but it’s gone so suddenly. The lights too bright and I can’t blink enough to soothe my eyes. The spinning in my head hasn’t subsided and I still can't reach for the memory of what I was thinking. His masterpiece is the only thought that remains and it’s one I cling to. Like a lifeboat. “That’s right james. My masterpiece, my piece de resistance. You are my finest work, you know that? What we have done together will change science forever, we have revolutionized the understanding of the brain. Okay?” The doctor whispers to me. I can hear the smile in his voice as my eyes adjust to the light.
The doctors hands gently touch my cheek, a caress that leaves me feeling oddly dirty. I’m supposed to reply. I nod shakily. “Okay, yes doctor. Yes.” The doctor unstraps me but I don’t move. I know the pain will come back sooner rather than later. I wish it wouldn’t. Another futile wish. “I have a few more questions for you James, this time I need written answers. I’ll bring you some paper and a pencil.”
“Yes doctor.”
The paper is soon passed to me, not by the doctor. Another man stands in the room. A guard. There’s more. When I focus I hear them moving, whispering to the doctor or to each other. I can’t focus well. It hurts, it hurts to be aware. A noise sounds behind me, a whir.
I’m hunched over, wiping my mouth of vomit. It missed me, mainly. It's now a sickly puddle on the floor in front of my feet. I don’t remember throwing up yet the doctor is snapping at the men about it. I can’t sit up. I have too. A guard is being disciplined? No. A guard is laughing.He made the whirring sound, a clever trick with his teeth. It’s not the machine. It’s not the machine. Their voices call distantly to me. “Sensitive~” one guard teases. “I think he might cry!” Another scoffs. The doctor chuckles, he’s beside me again. This time he strokes my cheek. “Calm down James. It’s alright. Don’t make any more of a mess okay?” I nod, a jerky motion that makes my head spin. A sheet of paper is placed in my hand. A list of questions. I steady myself and begin to read.
My head is pounding and my aches but I can read well enough. I'm halfway through reading the list of questions when an image floats in front of my eyes. Me stabbing a guard with a pencil, in a scene just like this one. It doesn't feel like a daydream but it causes me to grunt in pain all the same. A memory? It doesn't feel like something I'd do. I wish it was something I'd do. I wish I could. The pain is too much, my eyes and mind won't stray from the paper. The train of thought is cut off as abruptly as it started. The questions are in Russian, mostly. They ask for names - mine, others, women I know I've not met but can recall their names with ease. Protocols for missions I've not been on, how to bandage this wound, how to punish this behaviour, how to, how to.
Recalling the new information makes me feel nauseous, it makes the phantom pain start up again. I breathe through gritted teeth, focusing on steadying my trembling hand to write. It doesn't work. I switch to my metal arm, forgoing the familiarity of using my dominant hand for less pain and less shaky lines. The doctor watches me sometimes. He seems to be pleased with what I've done, although he smiles that way often. Once the paper is done my fingers lose their grip, the pencils clatters to the floor. I can't be bothered to move to pick it up. Instead I train my eyes on the wall and try go away, try go into my mind. I'm tired of this, of here, of everything. I'm so tired. Someone's touching me, I'm moving, I'm being led. I stop watching, I stop focusing. I let it happen and let the familiar waves of apathy flow over me.
“James?”