CELL E1
Erase me.
Increased pressure around my throat.
Still stuck in this shit hole of a cell. Been stuck here for months. The food no longer tastes good -- I can't even eat it. Robotnik, he won't give me more unless I finish it all. Every rotten, disgusting helping.
The shower shoots nothing but cold water now, so I don't use it anymore. A breeze blows in from the outside, through the open window two-hundred miles above my head. It smells like winter, it smells like the forest is dying. Smoke.
I'm put back into bed each night and when I wake up I have to heave both myself and my broken body onto the floor to eat, to piss, to shit. Some days I don't even make it to the bathroom. What's the point?
I miss her, I miss Sabrina and her support, her love. She's somewhere below me, down on one of the floors, dying, just like me. We never had any kids. I regret that now.
The bathroom is full of my piss because I can't lift myself up to the toilet, and the drain in the floor is clogged, but no worries, I lost my sense of smell long ago. As long as I can't smell it, I can pretend it's something else.
"Nick…"
Snively, the bastard, he was the one who broke my legs. He told me it was a test in resonation via high voltage.
Two needles as thick as thermometers, in each leg, straight into the femur. My profound moment leaving me here to rot. Chances for escape, gone. Snively likes to listen to music when he does it, on a volume loud enough for me to hear it days later.
The memory of the pain is enough to keep me company. He flips the switch up and a localized arc surges into the marrow, cracking the bone in half, vertical. This in merely thirty seconds. He switches the generator off long enough to hear his favorite part of the song. I'm crying and I can feel blood seeping through the cracks, my kneecap moving as I struggle against the straps. Snively moves one of the needles. He cranks it back on.
I really wish I would have had kids with her. Girls. Two beautiful girls. Snively looks at my shattered upper legs under X-Ray and says our next session will be scheduled as soon as my legs heal.
I wake up in my cell the next morning and my feet have turned dark purple from lack of blood. Weeks ago. Months ago. My cell used to be clean. My sheets turn redder and redder, it gets colder and colder. It was so hot that first day.
Winter. Winter is here. This long away from Knothole. From her.
Our next session, he lets me watch.
"Nick."
The pieces of the bone come apart too easy, melted glue stretching in the cracks, new fragments forming. No music this time around. He throws me back to the pond. I get to see what happens in cells E3 and E4.
They're right next to me. I see them and they pretend not to see me. They pass a large black beach ball around, they eat, they laugh. I didn't get a ball. Snively tells me to try to take care of my legs so next session will be more interesting. I don't even use my arms to get out of bed anymore.
I didn't get a ball.
The next appointment, the inside of my legs are bone soup. He extracts a sample over my screaming and stares at me like I did something wrong. He shakes his head, settles for shattering a left heel, and puts me back in my room. The others get a ball and I get a doll.
It's me. A twin brother to my reflection in the walls. A goddamn twin. Waking up to it the first time, it scared the shit out of me.
If I look like this, my hair is coarse and faded, my legs bend easily in every direction, my hands have no fingers, and my mouth is stitched shut. The same stitches outline my entire body and end at the inseam. My eyes are large black X's.
A game. The games we play with each other. Why did the subject of children never come up?
Our first year anniversary was on the horizon, but we never talked about trying to have kids. We had sex around her cycle constantly. Conscious avoidance, we were both guilty of it. It was a game. We were waiting for the other one to bring it up first, to have a cute little argument about it, the kind the other couples have. I love her for this, I really do. We were living a fairy-tale, one that we had so painstakingly constructed ourselves. Romantic outlaws. Star-crossed lovers. Us against the world. Two days after the last session with Snively and my bed is gone.
I wake up on the cold floor, my thin, bloody sheet draped around me, my doll, my mirror image staring right at me. The twisted stitches forming a grin. See nothing, say nothing. Even he tortures me, as a part of the game. There's breakfast right next to him. I don't even need to check to know that it's decomposing.
I've told Snively everything I know, screamed every angle, counted to two million twice and back. Now, we no longer speak to each other. Call it what it is. Sabrina and I, we didn't need sex to survive as a couple.
We did it twice a month at most. Don't get me wrong, it was brilliant, but like everything about us, it was more of a ritual, one that served to hide what we were really feeling. In private, there wasn't a need for the games, not like it is here. Alone, we were at our absolute best, and we hardly ever needed to speak to each other. The food is mushier than ever, dark brown and as dry as a desert sea.
The urge to piss comes every three days, I think. It's how I tell time now. The corners of the room are the same color as the fruit, painted with liquid shit. Mine. Mine. Mine. A result of my diet, everything passing through me. Shit everywhere. The doll manages to remain spotless.
Why does he feel the need to do this to me if he can watch me on the monitors? Greedy, if you want my opinion. How did I get into this? How did we all piss him off so much? He still plays the game when I'm all alone. It gets so quiet sometimes that I hear laughter, and music. Electricity. Her voice. Saying my name.
"Nick."
I'm thinking what purpose the doll serves, and I'm sure I get it. The clean doll is really me and I'm really the unwanted mess. Who could love this?
I want them, Sabrina. Kids. I want them. The disgusting mockery of it all. I recognize this doll more than I can recognize myself in the mirror. I don't want you to see me, not like this. A game. It's all a game, Sabrina.
It's a long crawl to the bathroom. I get the feeling Snively didn't even care if I knew something. Cold piss soaks into my skin. I can't stop shivering. My palms fall onto the floor and my eyes burn with the splashes. My blood-soaked bed sheet sucks up moisture, changing color. The doll is watching me from the middle of the room. It's tough to breathe.
Around the bottom of the toilet, I wrap the sheet around it in a large circle and pull the sheet behind my back. The knot around my neck tightens.
Nick. He's watching.
My arm muscles are almost gone but I don't need that much, only a little, just a little bit, some time, some time to choke. I just need to pass out and that will be enough, and I won't wake up.
Noose.
Knowing you're there is enough.
I can feel it now, the pain leaving my legs. The doll is emotionless. He isn't smiling.