Chapter 19:
The Madness In The Machine
For everyone in the world death is a very hard thing to grasp no matter if they've died and been resurrected by the hand of God himself, it is something that is unattainable to the human mind. Even if some are invincible, death is still the everlasting blanket of snow over the soul and our fragile human shells can only handle so much. Our minds are the pulsating processor to the world around and once we ascend to a higher understanding of it, we still are completely ignorant. There is a pain that weakens me every second of every moment, it makes my bones quiver and is saturated into my heart. This pain is something so real it overcomes every emotion or thought and breaks me down on a constant basis.
I can never be a hostage to myself again, because I've found something beyond myself in the darkest, dankest pit of my soul. It's a part of me that has always been there, abiding by the rules and waiting until it could be unleashed into the world. It's the darkness of humanity that resides there and ever since that night I've been immersed in silence hoping to keep the tides of it's suffering away from the world. That was three months ago, the night that ripped the world in two and stole everything away.
When I awoke I was in four point restraints in a hospital bed two weeks later in Maxville, hooked up to numerous tubes and beeping machines that sent shockwaves of high pitched sounds which reverberated in my ears as if I were a dog responding to a whistle. Later it came to my attention that when I was admitted I was in a coma like state and yet at random points in time I would start screaming and flailing violently as if I were fighting off some imaginary attacker. Warren was the one who admitted me, along with my brother Cory. Unlike me, he never woke up and he never will.
It was explained to me by specialist Dr. Frieda, and fellow super, that I had exerted a mass amount of energy from my sleeping ability. Everything that was in me was put into him. She explained that my body was in a fight or flight mode with extremely high amounts of adrenaline, it was as if my body had been on low volume and some one had just attached a sub-woofer with the volume now on high. She also said I would never be able to use it again and I was lucky I didn't kill us both. She tried to use the fact that I could now sleep as an upside, but when someone I love is in a condition like that it's a little hard to see it that way. Now my brother sleeps, away from all of the nightmares in a blank, hollow part of his mind completely unresponsive skimming the breath of being dead.
Everyone expects that just because something like this has happened that it's actions would ripple and change the world around me forever. In a way it has, it left me with more scars and reminders of reality than anything ever will, teaching me the darkest lessons I have learned yet. Because of it I see the world in a different shade, I see it in gray, but they all think it would have changed me for the good. That I had taken down the bad guy and rescued my brother in the name of justice and security. What kind of sick shit is that?
I've been examined over and over again, prescribed bottles of sedatives and anti-anxiety pills, and sent on my way. The doctors took my vow of silence as a key to "my own recovery in a long journey of self-anguish and growth". In all honesty, the doctors that I've been seeing are paid off by the Gray. It's obvious by their reactions and the way they move that it was their orders from above to keep me in my own head. As if pilling me out and keeping me stoned on a constant basis is going to keep me shut up forever. I've always kept myself caged by my own secrets and disabilities, but now I'm being forced to do something I already had planned and mastered.
On my return I was praised by people in the super community and Principle Powers gave me lenience on my school academia by stamping this whole thing as "field work" and experience for my future life in the world of heroes and villains. It was kind of like a college board loop hole for roommates of a suicide though, straight A's in my courses. Most would see that as a plus, but I see it as a pity bargain because she knew the gruesome details of the situation.
Although I'm still readjusting to this so called "normal" life, I take it into myself to drag my disoriented self into Cory's room every night and just stay with him until I'm either forced out by nurses or the morning light breaks into his window. My clothes wreak of a sanitated hospital and cigarettes.
Even though I've always thought of Gabriel as my savior, the fact that Warren brought me in has stayed in my mind. I don't know how he found us or why he never gave up, but it's something I just can't seem to forget. We've only spoken once since my recovery and his voice still lingers at the back of my head. It was late one night at the hospital and I was dazing in and out as the light sound of beeping and Letterman buzzed behind my eyelids when I heard his all too familiar voice down the hallway asking a nurse if he could come in. When she informed him that someone was already present in the room, he grumbled a "Thank you", and went to leave. Immediately I sat up and ran out of the room hoping to catch him as he briskly walked toward the elevator.
Right as he pressed the downward button to summon the elevator, I called out to him " Wait!". He turned and looked at me with an equally troubled and exhausted face. One that seemed almost unfamiliar to me, as if he had spent a lifetime of bleeding and crossing seas of fire and brimstone since we had last seen each other. His eyes no longer held that playful glee, they looked barren and worn as if he had never stopped fighting the world.
My mouth opened "Warren," I paused briefly looking down at the dirty linoleum floor, "I don't know what to say."
Rubbing his hands over his face, the door tinged and opened, but right before he left he replied to me with pleading eyes "You're not ready yet." And then he left me, again.
This made me realize how completely and utterly selfish I've always been. How his mother was right and now I'm more alone than ever. Before I at least felt the eery feeling of someone watching me, but now it's as if I've been left to my own devices of self-decay with graphic dreams of mutilations and horrific tortures. I would give anything to be a sheep, a cattle in this dangerous game of endless pain.
Now, I sit here masking my strife with Vodka and pills completely broken and cut off from those surrounding me in the dark lit classroom of Sky High as I constrict my uneven thoughts into a bundled mess. I will never recover. I will never give in. I will fight back.
