Chapter Two – And So It Begins
Sometimes the quiet felt like a tomb enveloping him. It was like being buried alive, or dead, or whatever he was… with only the panic of his frantic heart piercing the stillness, welcoming him back from the brink of madness.
Then offering it up again if he strayed too closely to the edge.
He was safe in his room… his white room.
It was clean, sterile, antiseptic…
Empty. White.
So very, very white… Free of any colors, void of any personality.
A perfect expression of what was left of him.
Nothing.
No distractions to divert his mind from his circumstance.
Nothing to focus on.
He took what comfort he could from what he knew. His room. The only place where he belonged. His.. white.. room..
It was all he remembered, so he forgot everything else.
He laid there on crisp, starched sheets, rough like burlap, and stared at the ceiling. Arms and legs spread-eagle and shackled to the four posts of the bed.
His mind empty. No longer any thoughts pressing against his consciousness cluttering up the wide-open space.
No fear.
No hope.
Nothing.
He would be bored, if he remembered what that meant.
Hours, days, months passed… time meant nothing here. Each moment spent like the last and the next.
Until they came.
They smiled as they approached and his body tensed.
Shards of agony greeted him with every fresh contact. Their breath burning black as it swept across his straining muscles in a searing flash; their fingerprints acid where they imprinted his flesh.
Sizzling.
Can't say they didn't enjoy their job.
But then you tend to enjoy what you're good at… and they were very, very good at what they did.
Color filled the room then. Overflowing. Splashed against the walls in fanciful patterns. Wild, bold stripes of red.
Dripping from the ceiling in globs of guts and muscle saturated in blood.
Sound again resonating within the four walls. Penetrating every fiber of his being and bouncing against his bones. Bellowing out from within.
Screams of panic and pain, pleads for Sammy. Feral howls crying out again and again, ripped from the depths of his soul.
SAMMY! SAMMY! SAMMY!
The lone word torn gutturally from his throat, over and over and over.
A mantra, a broken record, a desperate plea.
Cries of anguish filled up the nothingness until his parched, hoarse throat fell silent. His lips still contorting, spread wide with his tongue flailing against the top of his mouth, breathlessly gasping but no sound was able to escape… wiped clean from overuse.
Tears streamed down his face until all moisture was removed, nothing left to wring from his tormented shell. His eyes desperately begging for deliverance before his body burst wide open from the intense pressures, exploding out to fill the room.
His screams again piercing the emptiness of his mind, filling it to capacity with horrors unimaginable.
The cycle continuing for all eternity. But eternity is just a word; time paid no mind in this hellhole.
His mind was foggy, buried deep within a muddled mass of nothing. Veiled curtains blocking his vision, heavy and immovable, and he was cut off from any real thoughts. Distant murmurs promised answers if he could only make his way back through the maze to find the questions. Twisting and turning unto himself he always ended up back at the beginning and he tired of the search.
Time again stilled and then they were gone. The pieces of his body laying about the room.
His mind even more fractured and torn.
Fear gripped him. His only companion.
Terror and panic. His only response.
His body trembled and convulsed as thoughts crowded in again competing against the pain of his injuries.
Feelings reverberated through him, awakened by the path of his pain. Each crackle in the synopsis of his brain reconnecting all the emotions of the present to what he'd lost. Echoing throughout his being, calling forth all the images from before.
Foretelling what was to come for all time. Where he'd been and where he was going.
The journey long until he again stumbled upon the white room.
Wiped clean. Fresh and sterile.
He crawled to his bed and laid down exhausted.
Racked with a desperate hope for salvation he sobbed as his mind tried to grasp hold of the concept. Frantic to remember what these feelings were, what they meant, why it hurt so.
He wondered where tears came from and what they meant beyond moisture that wet his cheeks.
The questions and the search for answers bringing more intense pain than any torture could impose.
One, lone thought pressed tight in his grip.
Constantly threatening to flitter away.
Hold on…
He is coming.
TBC