Patient PsyX08

It’s family dinner one moment, and the next, she's in the room. Blinding lights glare with disdain at her naked form firmly belted to the stainless steel operating table. The floor, the ceiling, the walls, the equipment; all a pristine, screaming white. It is all perfectly in sync with the artificial sterility which one only, always, finds in hospitals. She wonders how they keep the blood from staining it.

Blind panic ensues as she notices the tubing and wires snaking down her throat. With each retch she feels them; taking up her airway, coiling in her stomach like parasitic serpents, dumping chemicals into her body at an alarming rate. Fear swallows her. A scream makes its way through the tangled mass. There is no room for words. Though she sees no one, she hears a voice muttering.

“She’s becoming active again, administering another 30mL sedative.”

One of the many clear, plastic tubes protruding from her mouth begins to run with a teal liquid. She can only watch as it’s pumped into her system. Sobs fight their way through the plethora of medical equipment. She gasps for air, terror driving her to the edge of sanity.

And then, she is again eating dinner around the table with her mother, father, and younger brother.

“You alright honey? You look pale”

She is pale, and trembling.

“I’m fine, just remembered I have a project due for class tomorrow. I should probably go do that and stuff. Thanks for dinner.”

Her parents look at her carefully for a moment but accept the excuse. They still don't know.

Her first ‘episode’ like this had occurred about 3 months back, while walking to school. A leaf had flown into her eye and, for a split second, she saw the truth of it; a needle piercing her iris as she lay on an operating table. Doctors bustling around her in their scrubs, mumbling about stored images in the retina. Less than five seconds later, she found herself doubled over on the sidewalk, retching from shock of the already fading alternate reality. She was late to school that day.

Since then, the episodes have been increasing in both frequency and duration. Lately, it has become an almost daily occurrence. Part of her wants to tell her parents, but she doesn't dare. She is terrified that doing so would only bring her to a place like these nightmarish flights of fancy.

She leaves the table and makes it to her room, trying to calm herself. Deep breaths. It's not real. A flash. Reality tilts, sidesteps almost. She feels it; everything shifting, spinning, like a heady nicotine buzz.

Her eyes flutter open to once more meet with the lifeless, agonizing white of The Room. The tubes are gone and she feels a small pang of what could almost be relief, until she looks down.

Her midsection is sliced wide open and there they are. Tangled among her organs, weaving in and out of the surgical opening, coiled among her intestines, covered in her blood. Moving, squirming on their own like worms in mud; a roiling mass of mechanical horror and efficiently contained blood. She screams.

"She's awake again, more sedative."

"I dosed her less than two hours ago. She shouldn't be awake."

"Well clearly, she is. So hurry it up and give her another 45 mills."

A few more moments of aesculapian hell before her vision goes hazy, terror ebbing away. She blinks and is once more in her bedroom.

Her father bursts in, "What happened? What's wrong?"

"Just a spider, sorry. I got it."

Her voice is shaky but she’s gotten good at this game. He leaves with a laugh and she proceeds to curl up on her bed, arms wrapped around her body as if she can physically hold herself in this reality, and cries quietly.

***

Three days later, she can no longer hide the fact that something is very wrong. She now spends half her time undergoing macabre experimentation in The Room, waking up in the middle of twisted, inhuman operations at least four times a day. The sedative they've been administering rarely works for more than a few hours now. She's overheard that a change in the serum -used to create the reality she has come to see as fake- could affect their work. As a result, there is little to numb the pain now when she is faced with the demonesque examinations. The parents of her old reality are frantic. She stays in bed all day, won't go to school, and awakens every few hours with horrible screams and uncensored tales of the tortures inflicted on her during each 'dream'.

She has all but given up. The 'doctors' have taken her apart and put her back together so many different ways, as though she were a life-size Frankenstein toy. Even outside of the reality, she can feel the prick of each syringe, the cold cuts of each scalpel, the slow stinging drag of needles and thread as they try to keep her in one piece. She watches them take bits off of her, out of her; making room for new things. She is an animal, a toy, practice.

She awakes in the white room -her own little slice of purgatory she's done nothing to deserve- but this time, she's alone. No white coats complimenting white walls, no cold voices ordering for more sedative. No organs or limbs out of place, so far as she can tell.

Now, she is laying on a surgeon's table, as usual. Turning her head, she sees the table of tools less than a foot from her left hand. A scalpel gleams. She shudders, thinking of how often that scalpel has slid across her skin, laid out her insides at the hands of the satanic doctors, spilt her red blood into white, waiting basins. She couldn’t, but...

With no small effort, she lifts her hand, reaches out, and closes her fingers around the icy, sterilized metal. Tears leak past her eyelids, shut tight against the future, and what she is about to do. Her hand comes up to her throat, the blade presses against her skin. A slight shudder runs through her body, causing the blade to bite roughly into her scarred skin. It hurts, but what is pain anymore? A deep breath, a flash of furious, righteous anger, and it's over. Her last thought, as her life drips down her now limp arm and onto the floor is a curious one: It is such a white room, and she wonders how they keep the blood from staining it.

***

"She's dead."

"I told you to give her more sedatives."

"I did, she must have had a higher immunity than the others."

"Well, no harm done. We got what we need."

"I suppose so. Call maintenance and grab some lunch?"

"Hell yes, I'm starving."