TAKEN
Author's Note: All the warnings / caveats / etc from the first post still apply.
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Part 6: The Doctor
... and I am back in the hospital and a man is taping my face gently.
The man is older than me, maybe mid to late forties, with a trim beard. He is wearing a suit with a white lab coat over it and a stethoscope draped around his neck. He has an air of authority about him that I find almost immediately calming.
"Good afternoon. I'm Doctor LeBaron."
At last, I tell myself, I'm going to find out what is going on! I try to speak, to introduce myself, but no words come.
I'm still mute.
`Relax... relax." Doctor LeBaron tells me. "I understand you experienced some type of cerebral incident earlier. This may just be another symptom."
He hands me a pen and piece of paper. "You can use this for now. I need to ask you a few questions."
He picks up my chart and flips quickly through it. "Well... it says here that you collapsed in a grocery store. Is that correct?"
I nod.
"And that you became very agitated with the paramedics. Started running around."
I write down my reply and show it to him. "They were trying to... I don't know.. do something to me. I saw one of them giving me a weird look."
"I see. You felt threatened by them." He makes a note on his chart. "And I see you have mentioned you keep smelling smoke, is that right?"
"Yes. Keep smelling it everywhere." I write.
"I see. And the nurse has a note that you were behaving oddly before. What can you tell me about that?"
My face turns red, but I write it down. "Yes, the nurse made a pass at me."
"Made a pass at you?" He asks.
"She put her hands in my pants and touched me." I write.
He reads my note and frowns. "I see. This is very serious. Young man, from what you've said you are experiencing hallucinations and paranoia."
I scribble out my reply furiously. But he ignores me.
"The most important thing is that you keep calm. Relax. We are trying to help you, figure out what happened. You just need to trust us and do as your told. Do you think you can manage that?"
I want to protest, to argue. To tell him I want answers. But he is a Doctor, surely he knows what he is doing. So I just nod my acceptance.
"Good boy." He gives me... well.. I assume it was meant to a comforting smile. It somehow reminded me more of the smile you would give a dog who had just obeyed an order to `sit'.
"Very well. I think we are done."
The smoky smell is worse than ever. I write on the paper and show him. "Doctor LeBaron, are you sure something isn't burning nearby?"
"You're smelling it again?"
"It's worse than ever." I write.
"Oh, it's all right. We've completed the Tests."
"We?" I want to ask...
But the Doctor is no longer sitting next to me. I look around. The area around my hospital bed is way too big. I see the Doctor, he is standing with Don and the two paramedics, watching me. But they are too far away. At least 50 or 60 feet away.
I feel like I am in funhouse. Looking through mirrors that play with your perspective. It is making me dizzy.
And the smoke. I can even see it now. Filling the air. It is in my eyes. Stinging. Blurring my vision. In my throat. Making me cough. The lights are weird as well. Everything is glowing, flickering as if there is a fire a few feet from me. Strange shadows swirl around me.
... And then it all stops.
Part 7: The Sands
The cavern. I am back, yet again, in the cavern.
Smoke from two braziers surrounds me -- although the fire on my left seems almost out. The fire on my right, on the other hand, is almost a bonfire.
The blazing fire adds enough light that I can see the group on the left now. Like the group on the right, they are all men but are not naked. This group is smaller than the one on the right and they are watching me intently.
Four men stand in front of the others. I recognise them: Victor and Duke the paramedics, Don, and Doctor LeBaron. They are still dressed as they were when I saw them last. Victor and Duke in their paramedic uniforms, the Doctor in a button up shirt and white doctor's coat, Don in his hospital scrubs. There is no sign of the nurse anywhere.
"The Testing has ended." The Tribunal states. The voice still makes shivers run up my spine.
"A Man examines each situation, each new development, for ways to turn it to his advantage. He survives, and thrives, by his wits. The compliant creature lacks this ability and is easily deceived... and as a result, is easily manipulated."
I'm used to the images that fill my mind now. If I am somehow on trial, then this is the evidence.
"This creature accepted the illusions of the Testing without question. It immediately decided that the world of the Testing was real and that this... " The shrouded figure gestures around the cavern. dramatically "... that this was just a hallucination. The creature lacks cunning. It lacks guile.
I am scared. I tell myself this is just a hallucination. There is nothing here that can really hurt me. For the first time, however, I doubt. The air in this cavern, the smoke, the figures around me... they all seem very solid. Very real. The paramedics, the hospital, the doctors... all that seems like a dream.
The being pauses before continuing in a quiet, sad voice. "The creature believes itself to be clever. But would someone clever have been deceived so easily?
"But this is, in many ways, not its own fault. This creature has been misled by those who did not understand it's true nature. They thought that, because he is male, he is a Man. To free the creature from the lies it has been told, the misguided lessons of a lifetime must be erased. Memory holds it back from acceptance of truth. But memory is fragile."
The shrouded arm raises. The claw slides from beneath the long sleeve. Holding something tight in it's grip. A wooden frame with curved glass filled with sand. An hourglass.
The talons constrict. I hear the wooden frame snapping and the glass itself creaking. I see cracks spreading across the curved glass shape. Small cracks at first but quickly growing.
And then the hourglass gives way in a sudden crunch. The sand escapes the shattered remnants. It sifts between the clenched fingers. But does not fall to the ground.
I feel no breeze, no draft. But the sand moves as if caught in a wind that I can't feel. I can only watch as it dances in the air before drifting into the blazing fire on my right. The sand ignites, flashes briefly, and is then consumed. Gone.
A shadow, an overwhelming sense of loss, descends upon my soul.
"What is your name?" The shrouded figure asks me.
No answer comes to mind. Nothing.
Why can't I remember my own name? It is not like I am struggling to remember. It is like I never knew it all.
"Where were you born?"
I should know this. Such a simple question. But, no.
I shake my head. The first thing I can remember, the very first memory I have, is being carried into this cavern before the Testing. I still have knowledge -- I still know words, numbers, concepts -- but have no idea where I learnt it. It is memory - my personal memory - that is lost. Burnt away in the fire.
"What is your mother's name?"
Oh god, no. Please not that. I can remember nothing: not her name, not her face, not the sound of her voice, not the feeling of her picking me up and holding me as a child. I have no memory of her at all No memory of anyone at all.
A tear rolls down my cheek. Then another. I'm bawling. Grief and loss that I cannot even describe.
I want to beg: Please don't take my memory... please I beg you. Don't take my mother away. I try to scream, to shriek. But no sound escapes. My voice, of course, has been taken away.
My body convulses, trying to express the horror I feel, a torment I cannot begin to describe. But no one moves. They wait. Silent. I collapse to the cold stone floor. I curl into a ball.
I must have had a mother and a father. I don't remember them. Did I have brothers or sisters? I have no idea. Friends? Neighbours? Lovers? I simply don't know.
I don't know how long it takes but finally my tears stop. I don't want to them to stop. I want to scream forever. To fill up this emptiness inside me. But when my tears run dry, my body still shakes as if sobbing. Finally even that fades and I am left with this heartbreak. Something so vast that words cannot describe it. My soul cannot conceive it. And I am numb.
Only then do the grey robed figures on either side pick me up and set me on my knees. The shrouded figure in front of me shakes it's head sadly.