_Speck_

Speck</u>


          I blinked open my eyes and focused them through the sterilised white. This is nice, I thought in a simple voice. I like the smell. I rolled my head towards the shutter-blind covered window and stared at it emptily for some uncounted time. Thoughts with no real relevance sauntered through my mind, strolling from one ear to the other. The blinds began moving calmingly from side to side, merging with the painted walls, and allowing little flecks of black spots to pass into my vision as my eyelids drooped down. My tongue lolled out of my mouth, to be greeted by a freshly cleaned pillow that tasted how it smelt: hygienic. Everything here was clean. A spotless, white space. Just for me. So clean…
          All of a sudden, I felt my hand twitch. Snapped out of my dream-state and only slightly concerned, I squinted down to find the tip of my forefinger bandaged and a plastered-down needle running directly into a vein in my hand. Mild surprise, nothing else. My eyes trailed from my hand up a clear plastic tube, to a bag on a stand, pumping me full of what I assumed to be drugs.
          Oh, I thought, and my interest was replaced by the sound of regular beeping from the drug machine’s companion, a heartbeat monitor attached to a probe on one of my good fingers. Still flowing with a cocktail of chemicals, my infant-like mind state had bored itself again, and found a satisfying amusement in tapping the probe. With each prod the beeps rocketed and slowed, and I tried to strike a tune. It was the best musical stimulant I could get.
          Moments later, the staff came flooding in with their professional concern worn like a nametag. They were greeted with the dopey grin of a child who is unaware they have done wrong, and a shockingly coherent, “Hello. How’re you today?”
          No answer, but an observant nurse noticed the cause of my mini symphony, and I was asked in a sickly sweet tone if I could, “Please leave the equipment alone,” and most definitely, “Don’t touch it.” A second, blonder nurse fiddled with my drug bag, muttering something along the lines of, “300 milligrams liquid-” I lost focus. Even if I could remember it, I doubt I’d be able to pronounce it.
          The first, slightly overweight nurse nodded curtly and said, “You are now due for testing,” to no one in particular, though I presumed it would’ve been me if she had more social skills. Her badge stated her name was Joanna. She wasn’t wearing a typical uniform, opting instead for a white blouse with blue sleeves and some logo on the shoulder, as had Blonde.
          A sharp tug into reality, and the needle was ripped out of my flesh. I could see it moving, but the pain that should’ve been there didn’t register. My whole body had been numbed down to a senseless vegetable state where the drugs Blonde switched me to had kicked in.
          Over the next half hour (or so I guessed), feeling began to tingle throughout my limbs along with regained soberness, and the skin tests and jabs Joanna was ruthlessly giving me pricked and ached. She didn’t speak while examining me, and I felt no need to start a conversation, so the time was spent in silence, apart from the occasional gasp when a dose of pain jolted through me. I tried to show as little emotion as possible, but that wasn’t hard. I was still in a bit of a daze.
          I looked down to the white bed sheets, and for the first time wondered how I got here. Recent memories had become scrambled and mixed in with my fictional dream world. I could only recall the most basic of things – my name – and a few splashes of past events. The rest of my background had been forgotten. I didn’t want to feel responsible for my state of mind, so I shifted it to the people who gave me my forced medication, developing a newly found aversion to the staff.
          I fiddled with a loose thread on my white gown. I didn’t remember getting that, either. So many questions rushed through my head: Where am I? How did I get here? Why do they need to take these tests? Who are they? What’s wrong with me…?
          I must have said one of those out loud, as Joanna paused in what she was doing and looked at me as if I was crazy. Maybe I was. We stared at one another for a moment, but she didn’t say anything so I returned to my contemplation.
          My forefinger hurt. It was a pulsing throb where something had happened to it, though I could not remember what. I waited until Joanna took a break to, presumably, drop off some more tests before carefully unravelling the tightly wound bandages. As layer upon layer of fabric peeled off, a crimson stain began to creep through. I gazed at it in fascination and tugged the remaining pieces of dressing from the digit, a slow horror creeping under my skin.
          Where the pad of skin had been, there was simply a bloody mass of grit and half solidified brownish red. The fingernail was still intact, save for a few small nicks. Pain shot through my body and my breathing cut off, coming in short gasps. I panicked; my eyes bulged from their sockets; I could hear my heartbeat inside my skull; my vision tinted darker, then I was gone.


          I guess this cell was going to be my ‘home’ for a week or so, judging by the average expiry date printed in red on most of our foreheads, so I settled down again on the stained mattress without a pillow and continued my game. 478 brown specks of dried suicide on the largest wall, I remembered, so I continued with the wall clockwise of it.
          There was no real aim of this game. In fact, it was depressing me in its own quiet way. To pass away the hours, I sat and inspected the walls from top to bottom, counting each individual blood spot from every lucky victim who had escaped before their time. They had tightened the security since then. It wasn’t what I could describe as a fun pursuit, but people do strange things when they are desperate, and I was most definitely a desperate person.
          Eventually, my sense of direction diminished and I probably counted the same spot 3 or 4 times. They began merging together in the dim light and becoming the closest thing to constellations I could get in the closed cell. I had forgotten what the open sky looked like; I had spent so long underground in these prison camps.
          At this point my situation got the better of me and a hysterical rage erupted inside, driving me to ram my fist into the wall and kick the broken mattress until I heard the snap of another spring, cursing all the while at the top of my voice. I wished they hadn’t taken my shoelaces. I didn’t deserve this. I finally let out a defeated howl and sank to the floor, my head buried in my arms and sobs shaking my body.
          I took some time out to slowly compose myself, then stood, trying to think of a more helpful way to reach the sky and feel the wind in my hair. I stared at the empty walls for inspiration, and inspiration stared back. It was the closest thing to tangible reality I could get.
          I didn’t have a pencil or a pen, - they wouldn’t allow that, - so I sunk my teeth into my finger until I could feel liquid dripping off my lip and chunks of flesh coming off in my mouth. There was a numbness in my body, devoid of physical pain. I had spent so long alone down here…
          The blood now poured out in a surprisingly steady flow, much like an ink pen I kept at home, so I began drawing. The pictures ran from my mind’s eye to the wall with ease, the crimson adding to the dried brown fragments. It didn’t hurt, although tiny pieces of grit crept under my fingernail and skin. It would’ve been easy to cure with the proper equipment, had I not been so savage. Too much was gone now, there wasn’t much use thinking about it. Focused on the moment, and hoping when I fell asleep I would not have to wake.
          I drew everything I could remember from my good days on the surface. Eyes of animals stared at me, so real they were more than a simple illustration. Movement flowed across the wall as the pictures came alive. Colour surged into my mind; more vibrant than anything I would ever see down here. Satisfied, I crouched down on the stained mattress and entered the first stage of sleep.

          A bass drum beat pounded against my skull, my eyes too heavy to open.  I didn’t know what had just happened, and yet again my thoughts had been switched to half speed. I could distantly hear some voices, mutters mixed in with thumping and static.
          “What haaappened to himm?”
          “He must’ve kzhad some sorrt of sttkak arrzzt.”
          “Dozsage?”
          “Tenzzousand lammzzittaal for three howerzx.”
          “We can’t tell khim abowkt it. The netwoork’ll zshuutt xus doownw, he’ll kill us allll.”
          “We can’t klet him dieeex. We’ll loose our jobbx. Jonnna, go find Taaanniahhh, she’ll know ow to fikxk him up. All we’vv got to do izz keep him alivvvx ka likttle bit longaah…”
          “Davvv! Look at thek monnnittterss! I thiinkk he might be wakxin up!”
          “Charrrk, takkk teh kekkzkzzv. Give him a shottt of pennnixclllcensns hybrxxxikaxl.”
          I stirred a little, cracking my eyelids open and feeling dried sleep crust against my skin. I blinked and looked up to see another two nurses leaning over me, one with tanned skin and full lips, and another, a man, with a thin beard and piercing blue eyes. I readjusted my shoulders to sit up, but Beard pushed me back down and injected my neck with something. My energy sapped out of me and I lay there, aware of my surroundings, but unable to do anything about it. I moved my mouth to speak, but no sound came out, as if I had been turned to mute. Instead, a trickle of blood sputtered down my chin.
          Beard leant over me to adjust a setting on something, and like the other nurses, he was wearing a matching blue and white uniform. He reclined, holding a large scalpel and began winding something similar to a tourniquet around the base of my forefinger. My concern grew, then instantly faded as Lips injected me with another liquid. I took a last shaky breath and blacked out again.


          I was escorted from my cell along a dank corridor, a guard on either arm. Occasional drips dribbled from the ceiling, landing with a dull clink on the stone floor. My bare feet stumbled through them and scraped on the occasional piece of gravel, forced to keep moving.
          The guard on my left gave a gruff chuckle and called to his partner, “So, fifty quid says ‘e won’t make it through. Care to take up the offer?”
          The second seemed to think for a moment, and then replied, “Yeah, alright then. You’re on. I reckon he’s gonna be the one. They’ve been trying for months now, so why not ‘im? He’s as good as any.”
          The first sniffed. “Yeah, well. They could go through a few ‘undred more, the rate they’re at. Do you even know what it’s for?”
          “Nah. I’m just here to do me job. You?”
          “I’ve ‘eard they take ‘em to swap brains wiv animals. You know, see how the monkey thinks.”
I shifted nervously, wondering if this was all a joke on their behalf, practised to perfection in order to spook the captives. It seemed so real though.
          The other guard countered. “Now I think of it, I’ve ‘eard they inject your brain with some kinda poison. Try an’ build up an immunisation against all the diseases down here an’ stuff. You know Gary from Sector 8? Yeah, well he said ‘e saw what they do to them prisoners. He said he was walking down a corridor on Base 4 when ‘e looked in a window-”
          “How’d he get down to Base 4? No one’s allowed in there wivout special permission.”
          “I dunno. We’re talkin’ ‘bout Gary ‘ere. ‘E says anythin’ to get a bit of attention, ‘e does.”
          “Yeah, I guess so.”
          “Anyways, as I was sayin’, Gary said ‘e was walking down and took a peek into a window, an’ he saw this guy strapped down to a chair, full of probes and stuff, like. He said his face was contor’ed in agony and he was screamin’ his head off. Not lookin’ that good for whatsisface here.” He tripped me and chuckled. “Not lookin’ good for my side of the bet either. Ah well, we win some, we lose some,” he concluded, as if my fate was already decided.


          I shuddered back into consciousness, and I was greeted by a darkness not dissimilar to that of when I blacked out. The most irrational and out of character thought then occurred to me; Am I dead…? This idea was removed as I shifted a little. I bet there aren’t bedsheets in hell, I thought pessimistically, levering myself up and swinging my legs round to the floor. I tested my feet, not having walked on them in days, and shakily stood.
          My legs buckled under me, and I instinctively swung out a hand to grab something, only for it to be caught by the edge of a blunt object. A table, perhaps? Damn, I cursed, and a shooting pain surged through my arm. I collapsed back on the bed and clasped my hands together, and using the only sense of any assistance, I touched the area around where my finger used to be. They took it. They took my finger… I gazed at where I estimated it to be and tenderly nudged around it in disbelief. It was still raw.

          The guard on my right kicked open the bolted metal door at the end of the corridor and shoved me inside, the last thing he said being, “You’re worth 50 quid, mate. Good luck.” This was promptly followed by a clang as the door was slammed shut, and I heard the two men laughing as they walked away, probably at my expense.
          I turned around in the dull light, seeing only snowy highlights on a mountain of shadows. The first thing my mind focused on was a round clock suspended on the wall, and as soon as I saw it, I felt the pulse begin.

          There was a ticking somewhere in the room, high up on the far wall. I jerked to my feet again, keeping my balance with my good hand, and shuffled a few paces, groping around the edges of furniture to find a way to the clock. Hindsight wonders why finding the time was the most important thing on my mind, but it would help me feel more at home, for familiarity always comforts.
          However I realised, as I ran my hands over the walls and tripped over some wires, that familiarity is not always such a comforting thing, and the steady tick was beginning to get to me. It was growing louder, cutting through my thoughts every exact second, perfectly rhythmic and making it near impossible to form any coherent thought. I scoured the walls more frantically, having already been in the room for far too long.

          I heard a click somewhere, and a faulty bar light flickered on and off erratically, accompanied by a deep buzzing from the heart of the room. My eyes darted to the unveiled metal chair, which looked like a sadist’s playground. Bolts rested around the end of the armrest and the base of the seat, and stacks of medical-looking equipment surrounded it like an adoring crowd. Pointed objects poked from stands and wires wound around the whole area, connecting to where I assumed my body would shortly be.
          A man in a white and blue uniform with a logo on the shoulder stood behind the device, and said, “Give him a seat.”

          The ticking became a beat in the back of my head, keeping thoughts to mere half-formed suggestions and feral urges to escape the prison... Which prison, I didn’t know. It could have been the dark room where I was trapped, now crouching down and hugging my arms around my torso; or it could have been to escape my mind – escape what I was doing to myself – but either was impossible.

          A set of strong arms grabbed me from behind, shoving me along and throwing me onto the metal. I landed with a jolt that shook my body, and the guard stapled the locks around my wrists and feet, paralysing me. He backed away into the dark, leaving me trapped and afraid. If I got out of this alive, I was positive I would contract xenophobia. I heard a short spark behind me, which was immediately followed by the smell of molten plastic, then a burning shock at the base of my skull.

          The beat rose to become short, sharp notes, the ticking of the clock now drowned out by the painful noises inside, which left me unable to focus on the outside world.
          My vision was black, and I heard nothing but that of the torment inside my skull. The ticks had become one long and painful note focused in the front of my brain, right behind my eyes, tearing at my thoughts like white noise from a broken radio.

          For the first time in weeks I made a noise. I let out a scream of agony as I felt my flesh smoulder. Another shot of pain seared through my body as two further white-hot pokers plunged into my shoulder blades, and I attempted to break away, leaning forward as far as I could. Tears had been brought to my eyes, and they now flowed freely down my cheeks and chin, blurring what was left of my sight.

          Why is the world so dark? I thought desperately as I tore my eyes open. My hands found each other and clenched together. The pain echoing through my arm was rivalling the pain from my head, as one finger pressed down on the bloody, raw patch where a finger used to be. I cursed. My eyes. They took my eyes as well!

          “Try and hold still,” the man standing behind me rasped, “and it might not be over all that soon.” He plugged more outlets into my body, working his way round until the pain merged into one solid scream.

          I reached up, with intent to try and feel where my eyes were. My fingers touched skin, and then they found my eyelids, and eyes, which were still there – although the skin around them was slightly sore. I relaxed a little, overcome by an soothing and unfamiliar feeling of relief that I was wrong, before the screech behind my eyes rose up again, overtaking all other feelings and emotions – causing my hands, which were still over my face, to clench.

          I couldn’t take it any longer. The flames had become more than unbearable. I took in some short breaths and my panting joined with my hoarse yelling, giving the shrieks of a wounded animal. My fingers spasmed into unnatural positions and my toes curled.
“I hope you work,” the man whispered, and a giant spark leapt from my body.

          My fingers pushed down, directly into the full sockets of my eyes – tearing and pushing their way into my head as I cried out in pain and horror.

          Then, for the last time, I shut down.




Case Report

Name: Aleksey Denver
Subject #: 76
Date of Birth: 4th January 1976
Time of Death: 26th September 2006 1:52am

          Aleksey was admitted 17th February 2005, as he showed signs of psychosis, often in the form of hypnagogic and hypnopompic auditory and visual hallucinations, leading him to ‘feel’ people that were not there and see places around him change and ‘warp’. Although these may seem common symptoms among schizophrenics, it was not enough to give a full and accurate diagnosis. He was given psychotherapy for 2 years, yet the hallucinations got stronger and more violent. It was then he was started on antipsychotic drugs. The medication was changed 4 times, at which point he was recommended for experimental psychotic treatment and was immediately admitted.
          Among these symptoms, he often ‘blanked out’ from reality. Occasionally he would be fully functioning on the outside, yet there would be skips in his brainwaves. It was found that these were more than simple ‘absences’. Instead, he admitted that he was not there, yet insisted he was alert somewhere else. He sometimes had difficulty defining his two ‘worlds’, and ended up merging them together.
          This presented the ideal condition in which to continue the experiment and, after explaining his situation, he agreed to have a few exams run on him for the good of our cause.
          He may have provided the type of test subject we have been searching for to create the vaccine. We have taken a sample of his DNA, along with several other examples of his genes. His brainwaves have been measured and he has been put through multiple assessments to gain a full set of results.
          He did not react to any remedies, some causing a more negative effect than we would have hoped, and slowly began to pass more of his time in ‘his’ world. A more detailed analysis is attached on the page overleaf.
          We pushed him to the most extreme before he passed away, and he reached an all-time high of Level 163. These results will be explored further in the near future.

          He has proved extremely useful and gave his life in the name of science, and for that we are grateful.