Tighter... Tighter... Tighter!
Alfred shivered as he curled himself into a ball, relishing in the feeling of his cold, bony fingers pulling his knees up to his chest. He squeezed himself tighter and tighter, as if he were trying to implode in on himself. The cold, stark whiteness of the sheets that had been more or less tossed onto the squealing metal frame of the cot he lay on made Alfred feel slightly nauseous. He tried shutting his eyes, but he knew it would do no good; it was as if he could see through his eyelids, the blinding whiteness eternally penetrating his mind. It gave him such a terrible headache, and knowing he could never escape it made him want to scream. So sometimes he did.
He greedily sucked in several ragged gasps of air, causing a passing nurse to cast him a wary glance. Best to avoid that one, she thought. Dr. Freeman is going to see him later anyways, so I guess he won't be a nuisance much longer. That is, if this miracle treatment the doctor claims he has actually works…
As the nurse hurriedly walked by, busying herself with some of the other patients that lay on similar cots all throughout the room, Alfred squinted his eyes open just enough to keep his gaze steadily trailed on her back.
For just a moment Alfred felt a strong emotion rising in his chest, an emotion he was sure that the doctors figured him no longer capable of. For so long he had been lying there on that cot, trying to squeeze himself out of existence and disappear to a place where the everything wasn't so sterile, a place where the thoughts didn't constantly haunt his mind, a place where he didn't have to see the backs of the people who were supposedly there to help him as they walked away.
As the strange feeling grew steadily stronger in Alfred's chest, he barely noticed as his hands began to tremble. His head started to shake back and forth violently, a pitiful whimper escaping from his mouth. Soon he was unable to stifle a scream that tore through his throat like a demon trying to claw itself out of his chest.
The next thing he knew the nurse calmly approached him, holding a thin needle in her hand that glistened menacingly as she held it up for Alfred to see. Then, as if she had done so many times before, she grabbed Alfred's arm and slid the thin needle underneath his skin.
Alfred's screams slowly died out as he was suddenly gripped by an inevitable tiredness that dragged him down further into the arms of nothingness. There nothing warm about this kind of sleep; there would be no peaceful dreams, no refreshing break from his torment, no momentary relief from anything that would happen in the real world. Alfred realized that it could hardly even be called sleep as he fell deeper into the abyss he had come to know as home.
Alfred slowly opened his eyes, still disoriented from the sedatives he'd been given. Once again, he realized, he was surrounded by white. But this time it wasn't coming from the familiar, uncomfortable frame of his hospital issued cot; this white was much more brilliant. This was the kind of white that could only be worn by a man who claimed to know the secret of life itself. That is, how to cure it.
The doctor didn't even look at him as he strapped the velcro head band onto his Alfred's forehead. He then turned his attention to a machine that was a little too close to Alfred's head, pressing buttons to prepare it for usage. Alfred recognised the machine. He remembered the nurses calling it an electromagnetic… electromagnetic something or other.
As the high pitched buzzing noise filled Alfred's ears, he prepared himself for the familiar shock that followed. The sharp pang of electricity filled Alfred's head, causing his body to convulse for a moment before relaxing once again.
Alfred waited for the doctor to removed the velcro strap, but was unsettled to hear the machine recharging as it prepared itself for another round. The next shock was a little stronger than the last and left Alfred shaking his head back and forth, whimpering pitifully. The doctor grabbed his face and made him hold still, not wanting to have a repeat of the other day's accident.
Confused, Alfred listened to the doctor's voice droning on over the sound of the buzzing machine. "For an older person, it only takes a couple of shocks, one on a really good day." The doctor said to the man who stood next to him. The man nodded and held up a camera, snapping a photo as another electric shock pulsed into Alfred's brain. "But if they're younger, usually under 30, it can take up to six whole shocks to knock em' out completely."
Another shock struck and Alfred felt himself receding back into the abyss, his mind consumed with nothing but whiteness. The doctor's voice trailed off as Alfred's eyes began to fill up with tears. The last thing he saw was the face of a smirking doctor dressed in white turning around, his back to Alfred.
"Well, looks like it's time to begin the operation. You ready?"
Why did it always have to be the back?
During the following four minutes, which was precisely how long the procedure lasted, Alfred didn't feel the ice pick hammered through his left eye, see the flash of the camera as the doctor grinned for his audience of curious visitors, or hear the gagging noises coming from an unfortunate nurse who happened to be passing through as the ice pick dug six inches into Alfred's head and scraped meticulously back and forth across his frontal lobe.
No, all he could do while all this was going on in the 'real world' was think about the only thing he'd had to think about for the past 11 years; the unfortunate events that got him admitted to the hospital in the first place.
He remembered when he was young, a little boy with something that his parents had chocked up to just an over active imagination. But it soon escalated into something much worse.
Soon his imaginary friends were following him around everywhere, he was unable to play with the other kids, and he was having violent outbursts at home, even throwing things and hitting his little brother.
When his parents first took him to the hospital, he knew something was wrong. It was in the way his father walked, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and in the way his mother stood outside the building with Alfred's little brother in her arms. As soon as his father handed him off to a nurse who had come to collect their newest patient, Alfred was certain that he had done something wrong. His father didn't even look him in the eyes as he turned to leave. The last thing he saw of his father was his turned back as he took Alfred's mother and younger brother away, leaving Alfred alone in the place where everything was always clean, always sterile, always white.
When Alfred opened his eyes, which were surrounded by a ring of black and nearly swollen shut, he didn't quite feel like himself. With eyes that held no emotion behind them, he looked down at the cot he lay on, the edges of his lips turning up. And although he smiled, there was nothing behind it, there was no fear, no thoughts, no hallucinations. There was no Alfred.
The last actual thought that Alfred would ever be capable of thinking flashed across his mind so fast he forgot it almost instantly, but it had been there all the same.
I don't… see anymore white...
I wrote this story in my psychology class after we watched the documentary, "The Lobotomist." If you want to know more about the subject, as terrible as it is, I really recommend watching it... or you can just PM me or something. I hope you enjoyed, and please review!