Serotonin Crimes

Routine Introduction:

“We are very pleased to have you all here today for your much needed rehabilitation.”

Subject Perception Verbatim:

The Faceless Doctors examined us closely behind thick glass in a stark white room, peering into the vacant gazes of the other two subjects, including myself.

“The steps are quite simple as well as crucial for your mental atonement.”

Before Treatment Analysis:

I couldn’t avert my eyes from one of the doctors. They all wore white lab coats and white spandex masks barely giving way to any seeable visage. Everything here is so plain, so nothing, so cold. It’d be difficult for us to tell apart those doctors from each other since everything blended together. Except for us, of course.

Between the girl to my left with the black, corseted dress adorned with obnoxious pink belts, and the man to my right with a scowl on his scarred face. Then, of course, there’s me. The only one with a brain and enough artistic sense for my sophisticated look.

I know I don’t belong here, but I am so confused by this one doctor’s heart-shaped locket. It’s basically a mockery of everything here in this wretched place in God knows when. We all stopped counting the years, let alone the love we have to give.

Whatever that means.

“Please stand up out of your seats and enter your personal chambers, you will be escorted by each of us to your Heart Tank.”

For a moment, I had forgotten about the plastic tubes attached to my chest, filled with my blood and something of a pale blue color. A vitamin, perhaps. I lost myself in that out-of-place locket. It doesn’t belong here either.

As the glass doors opened releasing decontaminating vapor, I followed the long lines of my tubes into the chamber. One of the faceless doctors stood by the door holding a clipboard, waiting for me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the one with the locket. That wasn’t fair.

The chamber was dark, barely visible by an ambient blue light. Then, the lights turned on to my Heart Tank. It was a tall, cylindrical glass tube that extended from the roof to the floor. There inside the green liquid, was my heart, bubbling inside, separate from me. I never really needed it anyways.

I couldn’t understand the strange text written on the outside of the tank, it looked so technical and alien like.

I remember the doors closing behind me, trapping me in this strange room with this faceless doctor. Moments later, the doctor placed his clipboard down to a desk next to him and walked towards my heart tank. I had nothing to say, I just watched.

“Patient M-60-311, A.K.A, Warwick, Vincent. Your Chemical Evaluation will begin.” The intercom said.

(detection) Cortisol levels elevate (μg/dL) 0.3 + 2.4, Emotional Spectrum Reads: [Nervous]?

Oddly, I felt nervous for the first time in… I don’t even know how long. I still don’t understand why I’m here.

The Faceless Doctor wrapped his hands around his blank head leaving me to further anticipate the very methods of this supposed treatment I’m forced to undergo. I was surprised to see him lift his head off of his body which gushed a strange mixture of fluids, hardly any blood. He smelled like chemicals. Or perhaps it smelled such a way. I don’t even know anymore.

It placed its head on a table attached to my heart tank and plugged cords and tubes into the back of it. Tubes which ran with blood and fluid just as mine in my bandaged chest. Morbidly enough, the headless body collapsed on the floor next to the tank.

“Aren’t you guys going to clean that up? Someone?” I ask.

DSM-∑ personality symptoms: [arrogance, callousness]? ...calculating

I suppose not. I’ve seen worse things, but couldn’t fathom such a clean place leaving a cadaver on the floor like that. It made my eye twitch a little. Just when I already ascertained this treatment to be unpredictable enough, the plain head plugged into my heart lit up with lights in the shape of eyes and a mouth.

CHEMICAL EVALUATION #M-60-311 INTERVIEW BEGINS

“Hello, Vincent.” the lights of the eyes and mouth animated movements much like a person.

I felt apprehensive for a moment, but quickly became amused. It was all very dramatic and perfectly clean like the rest of this world of a dwindling human race.

DSM-∑ personality symptoms: [contempt] ...calculating

“That’s okay, you don’t have to say hello back.”

“What are you?” I ask.

“I am you.” it said.

My eyes darted between the head and my heart in the tank. The head had a slightly monotone, robotic voice.

“My heart?”

“Yes.”

“But I’m right here.”

“That is also true.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s okay. I’ve always loved you.”

I scoffed.

“What the hell is this even supposed to be? I’m losing my patience.”

“Well…” it smiles. “I suppose your brain would prefer me not to beat around the bush. If you don’t pass this test, you will be categorized as unfit and become recycled.”

I couldn’t furrow my brows enough.

“So… you’re going to kill me if you think I’m not good enough? As if there weren't enough people killed.”

“I so love how you mention that, Vincent. You’ve murdered five people and never sought treatment. You were always too smart, being a reputable psychiatrist and all.”

“You couldn’t possibly know a thing. You’re a human heart connected to some programmed A.I to judge me according to some politically correct bullshit created thousands of years ago.”

“I am not one to judge, I simply observe and calculate the correlations between your positive and negative feelings. Your heart holds on to many things, particularly dense weights from this incarnation. Is there any reason why?”

“You think I regret anything I’ve done?”

“I do not think, I feel, and thus, exist. Your brain thinks, and thinks well, it does. Perhaps too much. You perceive over and over, processing trillions of information of everything around you all at once. You are an amazing natural computer, but flawed a system still can be. You are dysfunctional. We love you so much.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?”

“What do you believe you are, Vincent?”

“I’m here, of course… I have a body.”

“So, you are a biomechanical suit?”

“As complex as that is, ultimately, yes. Why ask such a stupid question?”

“What about chemicals? Is love and lust a series of chemical bursts and chain reactions?”

“Well, yes.”

“So, you are a biomechanical suit filled with chemical bursts and chain reactions?”

I nodded.

“What about matter and carbon? What about the neurons inside your brain? The very nucleus of your body.”

“That is me.”

“Your brain is merely an organ. Is that what you are?”

“The mind resides in the brain and the brain is the central control system for all movements and processes, so in a nutshell, yes. It is the driver of my body.”

“Okay… Why are you able to perceive your current surroundings now without your brain to see through your eyes, feel through your skin and so forth?”

“What?” I was perplexed.

“Please look to your right and observe the glass case inside the wall.”

As I looked to my right, a glass tank lit up with a brain inside of it like some kind of psychedelic dream. I figured it was a prop… Until I touched the back of my head feeling bandages wet from blood and more tubes connecting me to machines. I suddenly felt dizzy and ill.

“That… That isn’t possible. Am I dead? I should be dead.”

“You have to have lived in order to be dead, so you tell me.”

I suddenly heard hissing and scuffling, my chest felt an electric shock. The cadaver began convulsing as some sort of vantablack liquid permeated around it like vines. Once it stopped convulsing, it animated itself into a standing position, hunched over and swaying unnaturally.

“I wonder how your victims felt about you. Did they hate you? Would they forgive you?”

“I don’t think I’d care.”

“Do you hate you?”

“No. I think highly of myself.”

“You, the body? The mind? The brain? Or the heart?”

I had no idea how to answer that. Perhaps I wasn’t real, perhaps I had always just been in pieces.

The cadaver lurched towards me, the vantablack forming into a pickaxe, just like mine.

“So, you’re gonna give me a taste of my own medicine?” I chuckled, adjusting my glasses.

“Not at all, this program was designed to give you choice, and we are completely neutral to whichever you decide.”

“And what are my choices?”

“You can either listen to you, or what you believe is you. Either way, you’re in good hands no matter your fate, Vincent.”

It didn’t make sense. Suddenly, I felt a stinging cold spread through me from my chest. The cadaver held the leaking tubes to my heart leaving my chest an open crevasse. Whether I was really dead or not, I needed to be more dead. I needed this to be over.

The cadaver of the faceless doctor held out the shadowy pickaxe for me to take as I collapsed to my knees. I wrapped my hand around the liquid handle, and felt a consuming, vacuous surge clinging to my palm.

“You can walk out of here alive if you save yourself. Then you may be considered rehabilitated and fit for society, just as intended.”

[ C₁₀H₁₂N₂O // 5-HT dropping... ] Emotional Spectrums Reads: [despair]?

And there it was again, that thick black veil drawn between me and any ounce of hope I’ve ever had for living a joyous life. There was a seeping black tar feeling that trickled through what’s left of my insides. This really was all or nothing, real or not, it was too vivid to ignore. I could get rid of it like I always have, and I’ll take myself away and be saved. I have enough money for an organ transplant. Provided I could get to a facility in time.

It seems more than likely I’m going to die, and that’ll be okay too. Anything is better than this sickening virus inside of me, I just had to kill its host.

The cadaver stood before me, still swaying in its septic state, ready to defend itself from me. I’m not that gullible to give way to such distractions, even in my critical condition. My clients all paid for the valuable key I provided in sessions. Every matter has a root, a brain.

I swung the pickaxe close to the cadaver and penetrated the heart tank, shattering glass which profusely spilled the transparent emerald liquid. I successfully killed the source of this torture and saved my brain in the process. I just needed help… or to die peacefully. A cooling darkness came over me, and I could finally rest.

Chemical Evaluation Interview Ends.

I suddenly awoke once again, dazed and weak, bleeding. Round, metal walls surrounded me and I found myself at the bottom of an industrial sized tank of some sort.

The Faceless Doctors stood above me, now two of them wearing an odd, heart-shaped locket. I couldn’t help but laugh at my mistake. The last thing I could ever see through Vincent’s eyes were those lockets. I hoped they would take good care of them, especially mine until I’m given another chance. I finally know what I really am, and it’s not a brain, a heart, a body or a monster with a pickaxe.

I thought again about how they called me dysfunctional. Is that such a serotonin crime?

Pale blue acid flooded and crashed against the walls, dissolving what’s left of this man into a foaming slush of blood and medicine. If only I knew sooner. Vincent’s last words cracked through…

“You’re just gonna put this all in a computer and file this away, aren’t you?”

Patient #M-60-311 Treatment Result... [ RECYCLED ]

A short story adaptation of the original unpublished novel

By

Jenna Sharp