Short Stories

Experiment 256

Experiment 256: First Success

When something is repeated over and over and over again, it starts to drive you near insanity. For me that was the blaring of the heart monitor to the left of me. When I try to remember why I was even in the hospital bed in the first place I come up blank. I have no memories. The only thing I remember is pain or numbness over my body and his face with a doctor's mask hovering above me. I could never move or look away. Forced to watch him cut into me and alter my physical being. All I knew was the pain of that razor sharp knife on my skin. I never understood what was the purpose of what he was doing. He only kept digging into my stomach area. He did find what he was looking for. And I will never get back what he stole from me.

I think back on this now and I don't know if the cutting into my stomach was the worst of the pain or if it was the injection.

When its pain against pain you don't know where one ends and another begins. Was it worst to be cut into or have a super virus injected into you. All in all it was a horrible experience.

The injection, from the moment needle hit skin, brought a burning sensation with it. First only in my arm. Then spreading to my shoulder, to my neck, chest... it was more than I could take.

I remember shaking, screaming, banging my head against the wall. It was the only time i could move freely. He had let me walk around the room, watching me from the window seeing in. I begged him like I have never begged anyone before to just kill me and end the pain. His response was to shut the lights off in the room.

So when the pain stopped, I thought I was dead. I was relieved. But then I heard the heart monitor and it was short lived. I was sore in some places on my body and the wound my stomach still hurt, but the pain from before was gone.

When the doctor, who I later learned his name was Hunter, walked back into the room with a look of shock on his perfectly sculptured face, I knew I was not supposed to be alive. He calmly approached me. Assessing me up and down with his sky blue eyes, rimmed with thin spectacles.

He took my pulse. Wrote down notes on his clipboard and checked on the wound that was poorly wrapped in bandages.

Quickly his changed the dirty scraps of cloth, because that's what it was at first- just a piece of cut up shirt, and replaced it with real bandages. He even went as far as to clean the wound first and then wrap it.

Something had changed. In the past he never cared enough to clean me up himself. He had other people to do that for him and they didn't care at all about me either.

So what was it?

When he pulled out another injection from his White long lab coat, I panicked.

"Please, no!" Tears automatically started falling from my eyes. I had pulled my arms into my chest and was backing as far as I could while still being on the bed.

When he answered me, even the tone of his voice changed from the norm.

"No no, this will take away all the pain." I didn't believe him. Not for a second. There was no way he was telling the truth. He never cared about the amount of pain I was in.

But I didn't have a choice in the matter. He still injected me. I barely had the strength to fight him. Just crying spent all my energy.

True to his word all the pain went away in a matter of seconds. It was like air getting pushed into my lungs. I could finally breath again.

"The pain is gone, Emily. Now I need you to get up and walk with me, sweetheart." Terrified of him taking the sweet relief of no pain away obeyed and got out of the bed. My feet were bare and the white floor was cold. Just like the room. I shivered with goosebumps rising on my skin.