SelectionIll
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2002
- Messages
- 269
"good morning."
i cracked my eyes just a bit, and closed them again in a hurry. they felt as dry as parchment, deliberately so, like the sandman really did stop by last night and fill them to the brim. after i closed them, i kept them closed.
i layed there and realized in that painful moment i had seen a slight black man, about 26, sitting with impeccable posture on a hospital bed opposite me. i guessed, under that thin crisp disinfectant smelling blue sheet that i was laying on a hospital bed too.
"oh crap."
i said that. yeah, i felt the skin around my mouth tingling just a bit, so i must have talked. i ran my tongue along the two strips of beef jerky that used to be lips and wished for a glass of water.
from behind my parchment paper eyelids, i wondered at all of this. wondered WHERE this. wonder WHAT this?
there was a coolness in the crook of my right arm at the elbow, and this coolness was inside. i reached over with my left hand and felt the delicate iv pic. ok. one more piece of information. i have an iv.
i tried to open my eyes again. it sounded like the dead dried out husks of two doves taking flight.
there he was again, my roommate. first i had figured he was a figment of my imagination, then i forgot about him completely, but there he was.
"just relax. you're ok."
he was smiling a serene smile in that beige room. the linoleum looked like a mirror. he was wearing a faded blue t-shirt tucked in to blue jeans, clean-shaven. he had the easy-going manner of someone that had woken up an hour or two earlier, showered dressed and had been sitting on the side of his bed waiting for me to get up or breakfast to be served, or maybe i'd start vomitting or foaming at the mouth, whatever.
he didn't look like he was being held against his will. this was good. because if we were in the same room, that meant i wasn't either.
"do you know where you are?" he asked.
i shook my head slowly. i didn't want to risk talking again, blow an o-ring or something.
"do you know who you are?"
ok. now what the fuck is going on here.
do you know who you are.
i expected him to ask if i knew where i was.
i didn't expect the who.
but...i don't.
my new friends smile never flickered.
after opening and shutting my eyes a few times i could keep them open with relatively little pain.
the room was clean. there were the two beds and cabinets at the foot of each, a simple desk with a simple chair under the window that covered the whole upper half of the wall behind me. the venitian blinds pressed a bright morning sun into the room in thin bands. a wide wooden door stood in the center of the wall i was staring at. there was a deadbolt lock above a shining silver handle. i wondered if it was locked.
"would you like some water?"
my roomate asked through a comfortable grin.
"yes, i would."
i sounded like i was chewing on pop rocks. god damn my mouth was dry. my throat felt like it a foot wide and had a couple of tumbleweeds blowing through it.
my new friend stood up, walked over to my side and, never taking his eyes off me, took a pitcher and glass from the window sill above my head. the sound of the water splashing into that plastic glass gave me an erection. my thirst took on the quality of a trial of a saint. i swear, i must have swallowed hell the night before.
i reached for the glass, suprised by my weakness.
"let me." he said,
gently moving my hand back down. he lifted my head and placed the glass to my lips. it was a fucking miracle. i'm trying not to exagerate, but golly, that was some damn good water.
"who are you?" i asked,
realizing at once the futility in this question. 'if i don't know who i am what the hell does it matter who this guy is.' i thought.
"you can call me joe." he replied.
i took another drink of water and he laid my head back down on the pillow.
i tried to remember if i was religious, because i wanted to pray. all i got was the memory of one of the screaming popes francis bacon painted. this caught me off gaurd, well, if i wanted to look at the situation honestly, everything was catching me off gaurd. i was defenseless.
"joe...what is going on here?"
i couldn't even think of anything specific to ask.
"i should go." he said.
my heart sank. he must have noticed because his smile softened and he looked on me intently saying, "i need to tell them you are awake."
"who?" i asked.
"all your questions will be answered soon."
at the prospect of being quietly in this room with my empty memory, i felt a ball of emotion roll up from the pit of my stomach into my throat. where am i? who am i? what? how? i was clicking loudly up the steep incline of a very tall very fast rollercoaster and found i couldn't say a word. the carry over of my smug exterior was melting as joe turned and walked toward the door. noiselessly he pushed it open slipped through and disappeared. he didn't look back. as the small hydraulic piston slowed the closing door, i saw only a beige wall across the well lit hallway. there was no sound.
shit.
i was hit with the strong urge for a cigarette. i guess i was a smoker.
so i had some time for a little self examination, mental and physical. i didn't seem to be hurt. i went through and moved all of my appendages, one at a time. nothing broken. i still felt drained, weak, but i sensed the smallest amount of strength returning. the water certainly helped.
i did notice my knees were a little sore. i tried to pull the sheet over to take a look and felt the soft tug of the tape holding the iv in my right arm. i squinted at the label but couldn't make out what it said. seemed like i wore glasses as well, though i'm sure i wouldn't have known what it was anyway. so with my left hand i pulled enough of the sheet aside to expose my knees. they looked like they had been pretty badly cut up, but were pretty well healed up, which is strange, because i don't remember hitting the asphalt recently.
i was wearing a hospital gown. i guessed it had been put on over top of me as i was laying here, because it wasn't secured underneath me. the strings were laying beside me.
since the water had relieved my bodies focus on the pain in my throat, i now noticed a dull ache on my forehead. i felt around and found a small knot above my right eye.
so there it was, probably got in a fight. if there was a mirror handy i was sure i would see the indentation of a class ring or some such jewelry on the face of that knot.
but how does that explain the amnesia. a blow that would cause amnesia, i was sure, would leave more that a small knot. fucking amnesia, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
i tried to think of something, anything, but my thoughts just swam around in the crystal clear waters in my mind. i wasn't screaming in there, and it wasn't as if my mind was trying to cover up some unpleasantness under bundles of garbage. it was just silent and still.
although this may not seem that terrible, i was beginning to freak out a bit. all the who, what, when's started rushing back, and i couldn't answer a single one, and i don't like unanswered questions.
right at this beautiful moment in my manic upswing, the door opened and with an audible swish an unassuming man, probably in his fifties, strode in looking at a piece of paper on the clipboard he was carrying. he walked over to the desk, pulled the chair out from under it and over to the side of my bed and sat down. he focused a steady gaze on me.
"good morning, mr. alcott, or shall i call you jonah. please allow me to apologize for having you rendered unconcious during your acquisition, but we couldn't risk the alternative. i'm sure you understand."
i started laughing. i figured it was that or muster up the strength to jump out the fucking window and hope i was on a high floor. i started thinking about a william burroughs book i had read a ways back. i couldn't remember which one, but hey, it was a start.
the name, jonah alcott, sounded familiar, like when someone comes over to you at a bar to say hi because you worked together at a restaraunt three years ago. dim recognition, but somewhere inside i knew it was my name.
"the effects of the drug should be wearing off shortly." he said. "are you experiencing dementia, hallucinations, amnesia? it seems to affect everyone differently... well, keeping someone unconcious for as long as we have, the brain reacts in strange and mysterious ways." as he said this last part his gaze wandered back to his clipboard.
oh boy.
"how long have i been out?" i'm not exactly sure why, but i was terrified to find out how long i had been out. i didn't even notice the searing pain when i talked.
"a little more than three weeks."
jesus. it was right then that i remembered meshel. my wife. i had a wife, and considering that i've been awol for the last three weeks, there's an emphasisi on the had. i looked down at my left hand and saw a shiny gold band. oh no. if they did this to me...
"what did you do to meshel?!" i tried to sit up and was washed back down flat by a wave of nausea. i turned my head to my left just in time to vomit. it wasn't violent, just a thick syrup that rolled out of my mouth. i felt better, but now i was hungry. strange what the body does.
"don't worry jonah, your wife is fine. perhaps a bit worried about you, but unharmed, i assure you. our business wasn't with her." when i turned to look at him again he wasn't at all fazed by the puking. he took a hankerchief out of the breast pocket of his brown button up shirt and wiped my mouth. he kept a level voice while he spoke to me. it dawned on me just then that this guy must be the doctor in charge of handling me.
"so, what is your business with me? why have you kept me here, asleep, for three weeks?" knowing that meshel was safe, i relaxed a bit. they obviously didn't want me dead or they would have done it while i was under. just easier that way, i'd guess.
"well, you'll have to wait until your strength returns for the briefing, but as far as me personally, it is my job to prepare you, physically, for yours. the reason for the three weeks is that's just about the amount of time necissary for you to become physically addicted on the habitol we have been injecting you with every six hours. also, we had to make a few minor changes to your overall appearance, just to make you more attractive. nothing drastic, but enough that if you were to disappear one day and reappear the next, people would notice. with the amount of time that has past, peoples memorys will fill in the pieces of your change quite nicely." he seemed very pleased with himself.
"this is a joke, right.
to be continued...
[ 01 October 2002: Message edited by: SelectionIll ]
[ 01 October 2002: Message edited by: SelectionIll ]
i cracked my eyes just a bit, and closed them again in a hurry. they felt as dry as parchment, deliberately so, like the sandman really did stop by last night and fill them to the brim. after i closed them, i kept them closed.
i layed there and realized in that painful moment i had seen a slight black man, about 26, sitting with impeccable posture on a hospital bed opposite me. i guessed, under that thin crisp disinfectant smelling blue sheet that i was laying on a hospital bed too.
"oh crap."
i said that. yeah, i felt the skin around my mouth tingling just a bit, so i must have talked. i ran my tongue along the two strips of beef jerky that used to be lips and wished for a glass of water.
from behind my parchment paper eyelids, i wondered at all of this. wondered WHERE this. wonder WHAT this?
there was a coolness in the crook of my right arm at the elbow, and this coolness was inside. i reached over with my left hand and felt the delicate iv pic. ok. one more piece of information. i have an iv.
i tried to open my eyes again. it sounded like the dead dried out husks of two doves taking flight.
there he was again, my roommate. first i had figured he was a figment of my imagination, then i forgot about him completely, but there he was.
"just relax. you're ok."
he was smiling a serene smile in that beige room. the linoleum looked like a mirror. he was wearing a faded blue t-shirt tucked in to blue jeans, clean-shaven. he had the easy-going manner of someone that had woken up an hour or two earlier, showered dressed and had been sitting on the side of his bed waiting for me to get up or breakfast to be served, or maybe i'd start vomitting or foaming at the mouth, whatever.
he didn't look like he was being held against his will. this was good. because if we were in the same room, that meant i wasn't either.
"do you know where you are?" he asked.
i shook my head slowly. i didn't want to risk talking again, blow an o-ring or something.
"do you know who you are?"
ok. now what the fuck is going on here.
do you know who you are.
i expected him to ask if i knew where i was.
i didn't expect the who.
but...i don't.
my new friends smile never flickered.
after opening and shutting my eyes a few times i could keep them open with relatively little pain.
the room was clean. there were the two beds and cabinets at the foot of each, a simple desk with a simple chair under the window that covered the whole upper half of the wall behind me. the venitian blinds pressed a bright morning sun into the room in thin bands. a wide wooden door stood in the center of the wall i was staring at. there was a deadbolt lock above a shining silver handle. i wondered if it was locked.
"would you like some water?"
my roomate asked through a comfortable grin.
"yes, i would."
i sounded like i was chewing on pop rocks. god damn my mouth was dry. my throat felt like it a foot wide and had a couple of tumbleweeds blowing through it.
my new friend stood up, walked over to my side and, never taking his eyes off me, took a pitcher and glass from the window sill above my head. the sound of the water splashing into that plastic glass gave me an erection. my thirst took on the quality of a trial of a saint. i swear, i must have swallowed hell the night before.
i reached for the glass, suprised by my weakness.
"let me." he said,
gently moving my hand back down. he lifted my head and placed the glass to my lips. it was a fucking miracle. i'm trying not to exagerate, but golly, that was some damn good water.
"who are you?" i asked,
realizing at once the futility in this question. 'if i don't know who i am what the hell does it matter who this guy is.' i thought.
"you can call me joe." he replied.
i took another drink of water and he laid my head back down on the pillow.
i tried to remember if i was religious, because i wanted to pray. all i got was the memory of one of the screaming popes francis bacon painted. this caught me off gaurd, well, if i wanted to look at the situation honestly, everything was catching me off gaurd. i was defenseless.
"joe...what is going on here?"
i couldn't even think of anything specific to ask.
"i should go." he said.
my heart sank. he must have noticed because his smile softened and he looked on me intently saying, "i need to tell them you are awake."
"who?" i asked.
"all your questions will be answered soon."
at the prospect of being quietly in this room with my empty memory, i felt a ball of emotion roll up from the pit of my stomach into my throat. where am i? who am i? what? how? i was clicking loudly up the steep incline of a very tall very fast rollercoaster and found i couldn't say a word. the carry over of my smug exterior was melting as joe turned and walked toward the door. noiselessly he pushed it open slipped through and disappeared. he didn't look back. as the small hydraulic piston slowed the closing door, i saw only a beige wall across the well lit hallway. there was no sound.
shit.
i was hit with the strong urge for a cigarette. i guess i was a smoker.
so i had some time for a little self examination, mental and physical. i didn't seem to be hurt. i went through and moved all of my appendages, one at a time. nothing broken. i still felt drained, weak, but i sensed the smallest amount of strength returning. the water certainly helped.
i did notice my knees were a little sore. i tried to pull the sheet over to take a look and felt the soft tug of the tape holding the iv in my right arm. i squinted at the label but couldn't make out what it said. seemed like i wore glasses as well, though i'm sure i wouldn't have known what it was anyway. so with my left hand i pulled enough of the sheet aside to expose my knees. they looked like they had been pretty badly cut up, but were pretty well healed up, which is strange, because i don't remember hitting the asphalt recently.
i was wearing a hospital gown. i guessed it had been put on over top of me as i was laying here, because it wasn't secured underneath me. the strings were laying beside me.
since the water had relieved my bodies focus on the pain in my throat, i now noticed a dull ache on my forehead. i felt around and found a small knot above my right eye.
so there it was, probably got in a fight. if there was a mirror handy i was sure i would see the indentation of a class ring or some such jewelry on the face of that knot.
but how does that explain the amnesia. a blow that would cause amnesia, i was sure, would leave more that a small knot. fucking amnesia, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
i tried to think of something, anything, but my thoughts just swam around in the crystal clear waters in my mind. i wasn't screaming in there, and it wasn't as if my mind was trying to cover up some unpleasantness under bundles of garbage. it was just silent and still.
although this may not seem that terrible, i was beginning to freak out a bit. all the who, what, when's started rushing back, and i couldn't answer a single one, and i don't like unanswered questions.
right at this beautiful moment in my manic upswing, the door opened and with an audible swish an unassuming man, probably in his fifties, strode in looking at a piece of paper on the clipboard he was carrying. he walked over to the desk, pulled the chair out from under it and over to the side of my bed and sat down. he focused a steady gaze on me.
"good morning, mr. alcott, or shall i call you jonah. please allow me to apologize for having you rendered unconcious during your acquisition, but we couldn't risk the alternative. i'm sure you understand."
i started laughing. i figured it was that or muster up the strength to jump out the fucking window and hope i was on a high floor. i started thinking about a william burroughs book i had read a ways back. i couldn't remember which one, but hey, it was a start.
the name, jonah alcott, sounded familiar, like when someone comes over to you at a bar to say hi because you worked together at a restaraunt three years ago. dim recognition, but somewhere inside i knew it was my name.
"the effects of the drug should be wearing off shortly." he said. "are you experiencing dementia, hallucinations, amnesia? it seems to affect everyone differently... well, keeping someone unconcious for as long as we have, the brain reacts in strange and mysterious ways." as he said this last part his gaze wandered back to his clipboard.
oh boy.
"how long have i been out?" i'm not exactly sure why, but i was terrified to find out how long i had been out. i didn't even notice the searing pain when i talked.
"a little more than three weeks."
jesus. it was right then that i remembered meshel. my wife. i had a wife, and considering that i've been awol for the last three weeks, there's an emphasisi on the had. i looked down at my left hand and saw a shiny gold band. oh no. if they did this to me...
"what did you do to meshel?!" i tried to sit up and was washed back down flat by a wave of nausea. i turned my head to my left just in time to vomit. it wasn't violent, just a thick syrup that rolled out of my mouth. i felt better, but now i was hungry. strange what the body does.
"don't worry jonah, your wife is fine. perhaps a bit worried about you, but unharmed, i assure you. our business wasn't with her." when i turned to look at him again he wasn't at all fazed by the puking. he took a hankerchief out of the breast pocket of his brown button up shirt and wiped my mouth. he kept a level voice while he spoke to me. it dawned on me just then that this guy must be the doctor in charge of handling me.
"so, what is your business with me? why have you kept me here, asleep, for three weeks?" knowing that meshel was safe, i relaxed a bit. they obviously didn't want me dead or they would have done it while i was under. just easier that way, i'd guess.
"well, you'll have to wait until your strength returns for the briefing, but as far as me personally, it is my job to prepare you, physically, for yours. the reason for the three weeks is that's just about the amount of time necissary for you to become physically addicted on the habitol we have been injecting you with every six hours. also, we had to make a few minor changes to your overall appearance, just to make you more attractive. nothing drastic, but enough that if you were to disappear one day and reappear the next, people would notice. with the amount of time that has past, peoples memorys will fill in the pieces of your change quite nicely." he seemed very pleased with himself.
"this is a joke, right.
to be continued...
[ 01 October 2002: Message edited by: SelectionIll ]
[ 01 October 2002: Message edited by: SelectionIll ]
