Disclaimer: I do not own Reservoir Dogs, etc., etc. All I own is a copy of the DVD, which I am shamelessly exploiting for this story's material. But since Tarantino's a fan of homages to movies, I don't think he'd mind.
Chapter 1: Awakening
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The noise was incessant. Relentless. Infuriating. Just soft enough so that he couldn't decide if it was actually there, or if he was just imagining it – although why he would imagine something so fucked up was beyond him. Maybe he was crazy.
The beeping lay on the furthest edge of his consciousness. His mind was working slowly, haltingly, unable to deal with anything more than a repeated sound that he wasn't even sure was real. For the moment, though, the sound was his universe, and he clung to it with every last shred of his awareness.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
It took him a long time to notice the darkness, although that didn't make sense because darkness was the absence of sight, and he couldn't see shit. But that couldn't be true, either. Darkness was something in itself. As his mind struggled to remember how to work properly, he reasoned that until that moment he had been unable to notice anything other than the constant beeping. Not even the darkness. Perhaps the darkness hadn't been there before his brain could process something other than that goddamn beeping noise.
Noticing darkness meant that he could see, just as noticing a sound that was likely a figment of his imagination meant that he could hear. Perhaps there was nothing out there. Perhaps there was no beeping, and no darkness. But the fact that he was aware of both meant that his brain was working, or the parts of his brain that processed visual and aural stimuli, at any rate. The thought gave him comfort.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Touch came next, very gradual. It began with an awareness of temperature, the perception of areas immediately next to his skin. Some of him felt warm and some of him felt cool, and this confused the hell out of him. It was a long time until he was able to figure this out and move on to anything else, but he was not aware of time in the regular sense.
Then came weight and substance. He became conscious of things pressing against him. A warm presence along his back and limbs and head. A lighter weight on his chest. Gravity. Direction. He was lying down – that was it! That was fucking it! He was lying on his back, something underneath him, something… soft, and yielding.
Surfaces. Masses. Textures. Touch. The information relayed from his skin to his brain, zipping along his neurons, flaring up in his consciousness, and threatening to ignite in one colossal overload. Shit!
He wrenched his thoughts away from all of this and took refuge in the first thing that he had known in his universe: sound.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Coherence. He was lying on a bed with a blanket drawn up to his chest. His eyes were closed. Something, some sort of machinery, stood beside his bed making that motherfucking beeping noise. All of these things suggested that he was in a hospital.
He did not know anything else, but that was not important; he did not need to know anything else. He had made his decision.
He was going to open his eyes.