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D Memory - Experiments
It has been a few days since you last ate.
You are not a fussy or vocal child. You sit quietly on the cold floor of a room with no windows and no light, and your eyes can see as if it is noon on a cloudy day. You wonder why your mother kept saying she was sorry the last time you saw her. You think you may be able to guess why.
The mechanisms on the heavy door whirl to life and slide away, spilling dingy fluorescent light from the hallway inside the room and over you. You squint at the silhouettes in the doorway. Tall, elegant figures; you can sense the heavy strength in their auras. They are old--ancient. They are older than several human lifetimes.
They pick you up by the arms and carry you out, and you go along with them because there is not anything left for you to do otherwise. You are taken to another, larger room and strapped into a chair which leans back and stretches you taut. Slivers of your long, dark hair fall away as they shave your head clean to the skin. Twelve sticky electrodes are placed on you: the head, the chest, the arms, the thighs, the back. The needle pinches as the IV sinks into your vein.
You lift your eyes to the far wall past the edge of the bright lamps over you. The glass in the window lets you see through it, and a figure on the opposite side stands tall and imposing, facing your direction. The aura from this one is different than the ones who came to retrieve you. It's heavier, like iron, and cold. It's older than anything you have ever felt before, older than history, older than even human existence. And it is strong. The gaze is almost something that you think could tear you asunder, but instead it draws you in. Pulls you with a gravity you cannot escape, bends you to its will. It's a man, more beautiful than anything, more deadly. Those bright, burning red eyes through the glass are something you will not ever forget.
Your body starts to rebel. Something eats you from the inside. You think you clench your jaw, but it's your entire body seizing up, beginning to rattle and thrash on the chair under the metal vices. Foam spittle pools in your mouth. The machines start screaming, or maybe it's actually you.
It has been several months since you've last eaten.
You spend days you have lost count of in the dark, metal room that has nothing inside. Sometimes, they leave you deathly sick or immobile; sometimes, they leave you with blistered or pockmarked skin; sometimes, they leave you blind, or deaf, or with a swollen tongue. Every so often, they shave your head, and they only wash you in noxious povidone-iodine before they cut you open to look inside you. There are always machines, like the one made like a tunnel with a black hole which spins around and around you. There are vats, some like water you can move in, but some viscous enough to cause you to choke.
The hell is all around you, and you hate it more than anything, but you're alone, and you have nothing else. You have no one anymore but the experiments and the man with burning eyes through the window.
It has been almost a year since you've last eaten.
They put you in another room with nothing inside. On the far wall, a panel shifts away and a wire cage comes out. The panel shuts again. Inside of the cage is a fat, soft brown rabbit. Well-fed. Plump. Its eyes are large, soul-seeing. Across the room, it looks at you as if it can see the depths of you.
It's cute, you decide. It could be a friend. You're not alone anymore, you realize, too. You're both here together. And you move over to stand by it in the room. Nothing else happens. The more you watch the rabbit, the more you notice the angry gnawing of your stomach. You can't remember how long it's been since you've had anything to eat.
A darkness blooms inside you. When you swallow, your throat is tight with a terrible need. Scarlet spills into the rust of your eyes, glowing, and your fangs stretch long and ready. You can imagine it, the warm semi-thick nectar on your tongue. The rabbit begins to scamper in the tight cage. The sound of its heartbeat, quick, full of fear, pounds in your ears. At the edges of the room, shadows encroach, pulling toward you. It's your friend. It could have been your friend. But you descend on it ravenously, tearing apart the cage to get it.
You are all alone again.