Brought Low Again

I didn't want to go.

I didn't want to see her.

But I didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

Injury has a way of debilitating you in all manner of ways. You find yourself not wanting to eat, drink, move...live.

You atrophy, and lose muscle mass.  Muscle relaxers for the pain? They work by destroying muscle mass, making it even worse.

I took a last handful of pills, all while Twenty-Seven just looked on, unimpressed. There was an odd lilt in her voice, something I couldn't place. "Well, at least you're eating something."

I didn't even try to jest.  But it was true, they made me hungry, and while I couldn't stand eating much aside from potatoes, I'm sure that without them, I'd have not even done that.

That sickening crunch and tear.  The sheer idea that to survive, you've got to force more trauma upon yourself.  Its impossible.

I remember taking some time back there, in that place before.

I had to look it up. Sanctuary.

They had TV, and I used to be something of a comics fan. So I watched TV, anything to numb the mind. Anything to quiet myself.  A chance to normal out if but a moment

I binge watch some marvel shows. Daredevil is fun.  I binge for a few weeks and then I have to stop

they bring in the Punisher guy. and they say he's constantly living in that exact moment when his family died.  He can't progress.

But is that me, or is that the me that I want to be?

The one that's hurt but not hurting, damaged but unbowed, accepting that I cannot move forward?

Do I want to be hurt so bad that I just can't feel?

yes

I need it to end.

She was kind enough to lead me back through the strange place. Stepping on ground made of little blocks like legos, and onto a staircase of glass whisps.  I don't know why it changes, I stopped caring after it happened.

She leads me into a thin door that we have to stand sideways to get through.  The lab's the same, and I pull away. There's nowhere to go to, but I do it anyway. I live at the whim of something beyond me.

Wheels squeak. A masked creature covered in metal plates, and hoses appears. Its eyes light up within a facemask of some dark metal.  It speaks to me in a weird accent. I can see a tongue moving in its face, but nothing else moves up there. Is it armor that hides what it is?

Picture like...

Shit, its impossible to really describe because she keeps changing what she looks like.  Okay, let me try.

Picture a xenomorph, skin half of it, cram it halfway inside a metal statue, so it gives some sembalance of a human element, and then drop that into a wheelchair.

There you go.

She talks in this weird, English-by-way-of-Google language too.  I'm trying to emulate that as I write, because ITS MY FUCKING COPING MECHANISM, GOD DAMMIT, AND I NEED TO FUCKING COPE.

Jesus Christ.

It examines that fucking stump from when she cut my fucking arm off.

An eye comes OUT of her facemask, looks around, then squishes as it gets pulled back in. I'm more concerned about what happens next, than what she's up to.

"bAlance?" She says. I didn't realize its a question. She just stares at me. Time passes, and I really didn't want to talk. I didn't even want to look at her. Every time I do, I just think about what she did.

The fucked up thing is that she doesn't seem either malevolent or remorseful.  I was a project, and she seemed to like her projects."

"No?" I finally answer. I'm back at the point I can't look at her.  That whine of her wheels just makes me flinch, and I start reliving things I shouldn't.

I feel something on my hand, and I open my eyes. I didn't realize they were shut.  Wet flesh, covered with a mucus or something. Slick.

She's touching me. She pulls on my arm, and I pull away.

I got triggered.  I pull back and scream, and try to flee, but I can't remember how I got here.  Was it a door, a trap door? did I just walk down a hallway?

I thought I heard someone call my name. I lost track of what was happening.

I woke up again.

Voices. It was her. Twenty-Six or Twenty-Seven. Maybe both. I don't care. I hear a few words of it. I hear the word 'trauma' and look about.

I'm back on a table of some sort. I remember seeing her wheel over, and then I pass out again.


I wake up back in what room I've been staying in. Its starting to become mine. I feel a little safer here now. Security. Just a tiny bit. What little things I still have, they are treasures to me, they are my memories, my identity.

I look at whats left of my arm, and find its been covered with something metal. A cap of some kind that covers it. Black metal.

And now I just try to process life again, for a little longer.