Placebo, a story by Anna Marcelli Palmer
~You are my murderer. Yes, YOU. You kill me again, and again, and again. Throw me down pits. Into pools. On missiles and against beasts. I die every single day and every single day I am still here and you kill me way from the beginning.
And you do it for your entertainment.
-4-
There is a crystalline, viscous silence. An unearthly peace that spread its tentacles within the infinite blackness.
My eyes flash wide open. Fear they are going to pop out of the skull that's keeping them in place. Force them to discern any kind of dechipherable shape, color, form, until they start to sting. And yet, all I can see is a flamboyant nothing.
Music can distinctly be heard; some zany melody echoing, corny retro rock style. It vaguely reminds me of something that sends shivers running through what supposedly is my spine. Why does it sound so familiar?
God, I am so tired. Wish I could just exit my head, the ruthless cage that keeps my brain sealed, my mind bonded to its deplorable senses. Wish I could wander free in the universe and unravel the mysteries lying beneath our tragicomedy.
Where am I? I am supposed to be dead, blackish, swollen within the bathtub of my appartment. On my journey straight to Hell, forever engaged with my deepest fear. Instead there's this ridiculous music, irritating and childish, implying that there is still some kind of biological activity going on in there; activity that includes processing external sources of sound.
Bad. Bad. Bad.
Some fucking neighbor must 've forgotten the radio on.
But, audible through water?
Am I still in the tub?
It is so dark here, whatever here may refer to. Sometimes I am almost certain of having seen a random movement, a faint stir within the stillness, but soon everything collapses back to its meaningless glory. Mind plays tricks. Fear aggravates. Music gets louder and louder.
Some touches of light here and there. Uncertain visual signals, life on the canvas of an impressionist.
I can't care anymore. My legs. Amy. Four different causes of four different deaths. Three rebirths, and possibly moving on to number four. Recurrent memories, recurrent faces, recurrent everything. My life whom I don't own. My life whom I don't live.
My life whose conscience I just gained three days ago.
I.
Can't.
Care.
Not.
Anymore.
Nothing makes sense. Nothing ever happens. Everything is nothing, me being a nothing along with it. Nothings can't do somethings.
So I wait.
Close what must be my eyes. Shut. Clinging on to the music. Focusing on the acoustic harmony. Focusing on the sense, the logical path the notes follow, the safe pattern I can never have.
Reopen them.
Only to see myself running up the Green Hill. Feel myself running up the Green Hill.
But not controlling myself, who runs on the Green Hill.
Sometimes I hear this song.
It's cheerful and it's epic. It's fearful and it's home.
Sometimes it's just stuck in my mind, four lines, four lines written only for me, playing again and again and again.
I look around for the source. Tied to my senses.
But it's never there. There's just the song. Four lines. Me.
This time I don't even bother trying to assume control over my body. This time I know perfectly that, whatever it is that has started feeding on my brains, cannot be defeated. This time I know that my usual tenacity won't work.
Not with this one.
After all, -irony of ironies!- what can happen anymore which hasn't already happened? What should I be afraid of?
Dying?
DYING?
Mwa. Ha. Haha.
So I don't try.
I just wait.
See what my limbs do.
Process the information.
Try to figure out why.
This time they are actually doing well. Rolling. Attacking. Dodging blades and bullets of all kinds. Jumping. Running. Collecting rings.
The sun shines with pretentiousness in the daytime sky. Just as though someone pinned it there on purpose. Colors feel like needles piercing through the eye. Bright. Blindening. Surreal.
Fake.
Can see the ocean spreading its azure velvet ahead. As unmoving as paper.
Music is playing.
The fucking zany music. That. Never. Stops.
Why do I need to collect those stupid rings?
Why the Hell should I even bother collecting them?
Music.
Doesn't.
STOP.
I think I saw a number floating up ahead, shining in its whiteness like a gigantic celestial pendulum. Five digits. The first one being a three, possibly. My eyes automatically look up in surprise, but my legs are sprinting so maniacally that I am not even sure I ever saw it for real.
Does the same thing happen to everyone else? Amy? Tails? Knuckles? Shadow, even?
Or is it just me?
Okay, Sonic, focus. Breathe in. Breathe out. There's gotta be an explanation. Remember what you know about schizophrenia. Or paranoia. Anything.
Some kind of malfunction in the frontal lobe. Lack of a chemical something in the neurons. Confusion. Hallucinations.
Realities that are not realities.
The number flashes back, in synch with the rough impact of my body as it smashes itself against a flying robot. I think the three transformed itself to a four.
This is so fucking messed, I cannot fucking believe I am actually trying to fucking explain it.
I think an idea is starting to dawn on me, but it still flows like liquid down the walls of my skull. Repetition, rebirth, akinaesthesia, inability to change one's destiny. The only time me and Amy tried to make a choice for ourselves ended up in an unpreceeded apocalypse.
Like a glitch. A cosmic glitch.
I can feel it right there, heart speeds up in sheer panic as the notion begins to assume consciousness of itself.
But it never fully does, because something has happened.
My body has found a blue Chaos Emerald.
The world freezes.
The music gets louder.
Then it all collapses, dies in a heart shattering fadeout, as though nothing ever existed.
Sometimes I get this weird impression that I am sealed in a box.
It's small. Rectangular. Pitch black inside.
Other times I feel like I want to reach out and discover the world, but my fingers are touching nothing but glass.
Sometimes I am afraid someone is watching me.
But mostly I feel nothing, because the box is never there, if you don't look at it.
_NOW LOADING_
Good morning, chocolate chip cookies. Today is the day I am actually going to sew my freakish legs off.
Why? There is no why. I never asked anybody as to why all of this shit is happening. So hell yeah, off the two fellows go.
Know I have nothing to lose- cannot die, cannot get hurt more than I already am; a broken puppet starring in a lame shadow play. And thus, dear Amy, dear Cookies, dear Sadistic Asshole At The Control Panel, wheelchair time.
If it fails when something abnormal is done, then I will make it collapse within two days.
If the only freedom left is the freedom of self-destruction, then I shall cause myself the kind of harm I am mostly afraid of.
AmPUtaTioN.
This time the way down the staircase is calm, peaceful. Take my time on each step. Even catch myself humming the first stanza of that idiotic song resounding incessantly within my head. Make rythmical moves so as to match the tempo wheel-chair-time-wheel-chair-time.
Look around, thinking none of this is real. Thrown clothes. Books. The coffee stain on my obsolete couch. The crack on my favorite mug. Even the friggin' chili dogs in my fridge are not really mine. They don't represent me; They represent the one I am supposed to be.
And she knew for such a long time.
I find Amy in her usual spot, curled in a fetal position against the back of her chair. Crying silently, face in palms. Pass right before her. Open the drawer. Search frantically its contents for a nice, big, scary kitchen knife.
Ah, there.
With the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of the carpet; the remains of a stain that must've once been red.
Blood.
Nails against flesh.
Choking.
A stain that can't get off.
THIS IS REAL.
I fall on my knees, down by the moribund brown mark. Fingers hesitantly playing with the dagger, which has already gone damp from my sweat. Breathe deeply. Feel the rage seethe in my entrails. Up it goes. Ready to explode.
Both arms raised in the air, fingers clenched firmly around the lethal weapon. See how much it hurts.
This is for the dreams I will never fulfil.
This is for the children I will never have.
This is for the person I'll never be.
This is for the inventions Tails will never make.
This is for the world Eggman will never conquer.
This is for the Maria Shadow never met.
This is for the love Amy will never get.
Seven hits. This, This, This, This, This , This and This. Mind hazy, uncertain. Fingers feel sore, numb, bruised against the metal, but for theirs clinging on to it as though for dear life. Vision starts to clear up. Pain kicks in.
Deep. Thorough. Almost paralyzing.
Then, dread.
I cannot feel anything from my hips downwards.
Because there's nothing there. Not anymore.
Two scarlet-ridden masses of meat ahead. They can't feel anymore. They don't belong to someone anymore.
Intoxication. Dimentions waltz through the double vision. Clothes soaked in liquid, fingers glistening in the products of my own organism. Blood loss.
I feel light- headed.
My eyes are crying uncontrollably, put pain gets killed by the adrenaline pumping through my veins; and yet, despite all that creek of tears that shows me the world through a distorting mirror, I can distinctly hear someone's thunderous laughter.
I am laughing. Laughing my head off.
Laughing as the world goes dark.
Laughing as Amy screams above me.
I love you, I think. But the only real thing about me gets muffled in a deafening sequence of sniggers.
I am Sonic. Sonic The Hedgehog.