It was Matthew Sanders (aka M Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold). I figured no one would get that…. Anyway, I changed my mind about only the first chapter being in present tense. I'm sure it's confusing for you, this switching all over the place, but I find it adds a sense of panic and realism to the situation.
Chapter Six ; The Trees Are Bleeding
She doesn't know this man, but then again she does. It's one of those, "have you ever been at someplace, recognizing everybody's face until you realized that there was no one there you knew" kind of things ("Well, I know" the little person in the control room of her mind began singing, not aware of the fact that the time to sing Offspring songs should be saved for a less puzzling hour).
Trisha knows the guy's face, the guy's acne scarred face, but she really doesn't. This happened to her once before, when one of her girl's had talked so much about the boy she met at summer camp that by the time he visited, Trisha had already recognized his face without ever having seen a picture of him. That sensation's odd, for sure, and at this moment one she really hopes she won't ever have again.
Okay, she doesn't want to feel this way again and she knows/doesn't know this man sitting in front of her – but that doesn't answer the jackpot question: why the fuck is she here in this funky-nasty basement?
"Because you've been a very bad girl, Patricia."
Crap, this dude can read her thoughts.
She focuses her eyes to the man settled in the chair across from her, the only other soul in the basement. He matches the place like nothing else can possible hope to; a sleazy man to be paired with a goo covered basement with the pungent oder of… Trisha doesn't know. But it can't be anything good: roses don't weigh the air down, make it this stuffy and smell bad enough to form this nausea ball in her throat. Yeah, so back to the dude in front of her.
First impressions are nothing, at least that's what her friend Mary always likes to say. It's the last impressions you really ought to aim for, that's what she'll tell anyone with ears, because you never know if you're going to meet the person again. Don't try to be anything but yourself, Mary never stops to point out, don't try too hard by doing up your hair and buying a whole new outfit – that's a cardinal sin, she'll say while wagging her long, pale finger. Last impressions, those are what you want to go with. That way, when you meet someone, they know right away who the hell you are and what you're all about.
Trisha never knows what Mary is always talking about – last impressions, wouldn't they be the same as first impressions? They're impressions, anyway, what the fuck kind of difference does it make? But as she stares down the forty, fifty-year-old calmly situated in the big, Old-Sparky-without-all-the-fixens chair a half dozen feet in front of her, Trisha's dead set on the fact that he must have gone to the same crack-pot mantra of a class as Mary had.
Her new playmate is horrendously short, has to scoot his butt all the way to the front edge of the chair seat in order for his feet to kind of, sort of touch the ground and even then – swing, swing. That alone makes Trisha want to laugh, but the look on his face makes her think better of it: Wentworth Miller on steroids. Now, he's not anywhere near Mr. Miller status on the Scale of Attractiveness (anyone who's anyone will agree with her, of that she's quite sure), but for the sake of argument this dude has such a stern face, an intense stare as to make poor Went blush and run back to New Jersey, go back to singing a capella with The Princeton Tigertones.
He has his hands folded in his lap, this new guy and not Went Miller (because if it was Wentworth Miller Trisha'd have him on the floor by now), real gentleman like and his posture is impeccable. But that doesn't mask his eyes, those scary intense eyes. They're black, too. Fucking hell, they're black – not all black, that's just stupid, but the irises. The fact that he had just read Trisha's thoughts didn't soften them at all, and neither did those singing acne scars – he looks like a freaky burn victim, so not GQ.
This is kind of like a Stephen King novel come to life, what with the black eyes and the mind reading, and Trisha hates Stephen King novels. Shit, fuck, motherfucker, cunt, she isn't liking this so far.
"Miss Garland, I will not tolerate that kind of language, especially coming from a young lady such as yourself," Pot Hole Face puts sternly.
Trisha rolls her eyes, and her new stranger friend continues on like she really hadn't taken her bitch pills this morning. No, wait, it was last night.
Trisha can't remember ever waking up today, just yelling at her parents and slamming the door, putting the pillow over her head and falling asleep. What had they been fighting about, anyway? Christ, they fight so much it gets so hard to tell, everything just melds together into one ugly lump. Her boyfriend, at least she figures, because all the fights nowadays revolve around that twentysomething-year-old boyfriend of hers. Yeah, so Trisha isn't even seventeen yet, but Derek's a nice guy and her stupid, asshole parents don't want to acknowledge that.
All right, so she had slammed the door in her father's face last night and went to sleep. Sleep… here. Here… sleep. Why can't she remember anything between those two points? Trisha didn't just Apparate here like those witch kids in those books, that's crazy talk. She had to have been drugged, and this was all a toxin induced dream. That makes perfect sense, the being drugged scenario. So Trisha'll just chill out in this chair and ignore the bozo in front of her until the alarm clock goes off at the ass-crack of dawn.
"Like I've previously stated, you're here because you've been a very improper young woman. I don't know about you, dear Patricia, but I would like to do something about that," the stranger spouts on. For a mind reader, Acne Scars isn't too up on the fact that Trisha's more concerned about finding out who drugged her than what he has to say.
Preoccupied, wracking her brain trying to find out who was there in Christie-Ann's rumpus room that didn't like her enough to drug her, Trisha looks at her playmate without actually looking at him. "Fine, do what you want, but just don't look at me like that. Even in dreams, it's not fucking polite to stare."
But she didn't form the words correctly, wasn't able to, because she has this thing in her mouth, this horse bit. The hell? Of course, this is a dream and in dreams things appear out of nowhere.
Jesus, her night just keeps getting worse. As if living on this God forsaken island isn't bad enough, Trisha simply has to wind up drugged and be going through this creepy, S&M confused, high of a dream. Not only that, this dream has to take place in a foul basement, she has to sit across from this crazy looking dude with a gag in her mouth, and have absolutely no recollection of even being drugged in the first place. Well, if this moment gets any worse she'll shoot herself. Yep, she'll dream up a revolver and empty a few rounds into her pretty dream head – that'll take care of this lousy night.
And maybe then this freak will stop staring at her. God, why doesn't he wash his scrubs every once and a while? They're rotting from the old blood, it's so disgusting. Better yet, why the hell doesn't he take a moment out of washing those offensive scrubs and learn how to blink? Shit, not blinking like that is more creepy than his sternness and intensity. Great, and now the pot hole face doctor is smiling.
"There's no need to be so angry, Miss Garland," the greasy, bloody, certifiably insane MD tells her. "I've done this many a time before."
This? What the fuck does "this" mean?
Trisha, being the rude and flaky chick that she is, makes to get up out of her chair and accomplish an ace diva-style stormy exit from the vile and slimy walled basement… but she's tied to it, the chair, another gift of her spiked cola.
Until this moment she never thought herself so dumb as to not notice being bound to a chair with a bit in her mouth, in the waking world or not. God, with her braces it's going to be a bloody miracle if the piece of horse equipment ever came out. But why's she freaking out about it, this is a dream…. But of course, since when do dreams give you a splinter in your index finger that stings and bleeds and feels all too real?
Dream or not, Trisha's never touching drugs again. Alcohol maybe, but definitely no more drugs if it means going through this again; this is so not her idea of a high. What are those druggies so elated about if this is what a high is like?
"Don't worry," the psycho-chic doctor says to her like she'd never tuned him out to worry about a horse bit entwining with her braces, druggies and how they can actually like this kind of fucking thing. "This won't hurt you too badly."
And then, out of a dark corner of the room, a nurse walks into the picture, a really formidable one with her frizzy hair up in a bun. The nurse is holding something in her hands, something that most certainly should be in a tool shed and definately not in the presence of a doctor with an evil sheen to his eyes, an intensity that outdoes Wentworth Miller when that shouldn't even be possible.
There's a feeling creeping through her now, that black hole where your stomach once was kind of feeling that accompanies seeing the grin on a doctor's face when he looks at said blood stained wood working tool. It's a bad sign, a really bad sign, that pumps Trisha full of "fight or flight".
Flight, please. Flight, flight, flight. First class next to her little Wenty, right by the restroom so she can get a stamp on her Mile High Club card.
"Relax, Patricia," the giddy, maniac doctor tells her in a sing-song manner. "It's not as if you have the option of leaving. Bad young women can never go home."
Wake up, Trisha. Just wake up, Trisha. Come the fuck on, Trisha, this is all a dream and you need to wake up!
The doctor leans toward her, close enough for the smell of his decaying teeth to rape her senses. "No, Patricia. This isn't a dream, you can't wake up, because you are already awake."
Violently Trisha shakes her head, screams a high pitched series of "No!"s through her gag, and thrashes around so much that she actually moves the chair she's bound to a foot to the right. Dream or not, she wants out. She's always gotten what she's wanted and right now what she wants is to get the fuck out of this whore's pussy of a room.
There has to be a door around here somewhere, she wouldn't have gotten herself stuck down here like this if there wasn't one. But how is Trisha suppose to find that damn door and get herself through it if she's bound to a solid wood chair and she's being threatened by a guy taking a saw from his nurse's hands?
Who is this guy to treat her like this, anyway? Who the bloody hell is he to gag and bind her and hide her deep within some disgusting pit? She, Patricia Ann Garland, prom queen two times running, was not suppose to be knocked around like this. She was not born to be trapped in a chair giving her splinters and fall down in it onto her side because she moved around too much.
The doctor, holding the old fashioned saw limp in his right hand, sighed. "Don't make this harder on yourself, Patricia. The more you squirm about, the more this is going to hurt you, and I don't think you want to jog my hand and have this saw slice your entire brain in half, do you?"
Trisha's crying, not because she's afraid (though she is, enough so to piss her pants) but, because she's angry someone could treat her this way. Save sawing at someone for the lunatics, the slime ball hicks in the Georgia hills, but not her. Patricia Garland is not – is not – this bastard's toy.
"It's an attitude like that, Patricia, that makes your insides so black and ugly – here, allow me to show you."
Trisha's chair, being so old, isn't quite fit enough to handle a healthy sixteen-year-old's twisting and thrashing blows. As the doctor approaches her to let her see her guts, her left leg suddenly flies out further than she ever intended it to and kicks him in the knee. Sadly, it doesn't stop him at all – on the contrary, that kick seems to have made him more energized – and keeps on pursuing a frantic Trisha.
Smiling, caressing the wooden saw handle with his thumb, the mad doctor arrives beside Trisha and gazes down at her. "I've always been fond of the ones who are so desperate to get away that they only make things worse for themselves. What say you, Emily?"
Panicking though she is, Trisha is still far too conscious of the present situation. Her right shoulder's killing her, absolutely killing her, and she thinks she might have dislocated it from moving it around so much like she did. Hands rubbed raw against the wooden arms of the chair, bleeding and screaming out like wild beasts, black mold jumping from the floor to the right side of her face, and sheer terror aren't enough to move Trisha's mind away from the mad doctor and his nurse.
The nurse is foreign, German or Russian or something like that, which explains why she's built like a brick wall. With a head thinking it's a top, it's hard for Trisha to understand what the hell it is that the nurse is talking about – something involving a mutt and a bear trap.
"What do you say we make this one extra special?"
Those words are like a booming terror inside Trisha's head. She can't believe it, not at all, but this mad doctor with the horrific acne scars is actually thinking about making this moment even more frightening than it already is. She doesn't want to know what they're going to do to her, Trisha just doesn't want to know, and so she starts crying even harder now. Carried into her lungs by aid of her gasping breaths, are surely loads and loads of black mold and slime particles.
"Doktorr, vhat are you propozink?"
And he leans down over Trisha, swinging the saw playfully with one finger. "What do you say we make this one extra special?" he repeats. "This one, I'm afraid she's going to move around too much during the surgery and make it useless. Right. We'll see what makes this woman tick, see if we cannot help her that way."
She's still trying to get out of the binds, Trisha is, but she's doing it so pathetically, so weakly, and she's crying like a baby.
Still leaning before Trisha, the doctor nods. He raises his right arm and brings the saw down on the binds, one two three, each in a swift smack, slide kind of motion. But along with the binds comes Trisha's right foot, both her hands, and even the bit in her mouth can't stop the blood curdling scream that escapes her.
"There, now, you aren't thinking about getting away from me," the doctor states coldly as he stands up. "I wouldn't want you to leave me now, dear Patricia, not when you're so close to the healing stage. Let me help you, eh, Miss Garland? Well," he laughs, "I suppose asking you for your permission is an inane thing to do, because even if you say no…."
Yes, it is an insipid, silly, thing to do. Dear Patricia doesn't want any help, not that it matters if she voices that opinion, especially if help involves more mutilation. But she does want one thing, though: she wants to go home.
Bawling, bleeding profusely, screaming from the pain, Trisha falls onto her stomach. She looks nothing like the two-time prom queen she used to be, not with two hands and one foot missing and a face bloated from crying and a nose that's running in that way she's always made fun of when she sees people crying and in desperate need of a tissue in the movie theatre. Now she's one of those weeping freaks – too bad she's in too much pain to laugh at herself.
"Emily, love, if you could move her into a better position for me. Yes, I think that's best. Help her to roll onto her back – no use of putting her on the table if she can slip right out of the restraints – and maybe hold her down for me," the doctor orders.
Trisha doesn't understand why he's doing this, why he's so keen on chopping off her hands and sawing to her brain, but she's in no state to fight about it now. She'll give anything to be back home again, screaming at her parents about how stupid they are for telling her she can't date her boyfriend, and if it means no hands and only one foot….
Her brain's foggy by the time Nurse Emily comes to her, digs her nails into Trisha's left side and violently rolls her onto her back. The nurse is saying something to her, so's the doctor, but Trisha can't really hear. The words are all watered down, muddy, and she can't make any of them out. She guesses the nurse can't possibly be complaining about how much blood is getting onto her old fashioned uniform, not when it's so hopelessly stained already.
The doctor's standing before her, that little man with dead black eyes, but Trisha doesn't really see him. Shock is setting in, and she's wondering why she hasn't passed out from all the pain she feels yet. It happened in Lost, when that one Tailie gets his leg set without being anesthetized, he passes right out. Maybe she's in too much pain to pass out, is that possible? She figures, since it's not unheard of to be too tired to fall asleep.
She can't decipher what she sees anymore, her brain's slowed down so much. Her thoughts are all funny, too: she can't think straight. Trisha's staring up at the doctor, thrashing around in efforts to be free or maybe that's all in her head. She doesn't know, is just kind of wasting away there on the floor, is only vaguely aware of the doctor kneeling down to put his face too close to hers.
His lips are moving soundlessly around the time a pinching, stinging sensation comes from her chest. It doesn't hurt because nothing really hurts anymore. Trisha can still feel, just not hurt, not the kind of hurt that ran through her when her hands and foot were cut off. She likes that, likes this feeling of floating down a river on an inner tube. It's so peaceful, this feeling, and she wishes the blackness crawling around the edges of her vision will come closer to her, wrap her up like a blanket, like Derek's arms when he lies on the couch with her when there's nothing else to do but cuddle.
But in a brief, bright moment of clarity among the enclosing darkness, Trisha can feel all too well doctor's hand dive through her chest, to her heart and she screams like she never has before. The nurse, she can feel her too, feel her fingers dig deeper into her arms to hold her steady. Lastly and most frighteningly, before she finally falls into unconsciousness, Trisha can hear the doctor yelling at her, his voice making the slimy concrete walls shake.
"–CAN NEVER GO HOME!"