I opened my eyes. I lay solemnly under the half-shade of the fading autumn trees; the endless skies a brilliant blue-green, clouds at a stand-still. Sharp blades of emerald grass play about my limbs in the gentle breeze, caressing me like the softest of feathers. My senses seem ultra sharp, I am aware of each individual blade of grass grazing my skin, of the pitter-patter of the ant’s ceremonious steps several feet away. I am at peace with the world.
I know I can move, I feel as if I’ve rested an eternity, but I don’t need to. I can feel the world around me explore it without the slightest movement. It is beautiful, and calm, a blessing, I think. Blessing; what an intriguing word. It seems foreign to me, and I feel a warmth in my core, slowly heating soon becoming uncomfortable. I taste the tinge of metal on my tongue and my vision takes on a fiery hue. Anger, my mind tells me. Giving a name to the strange yet somehow familiar feeling. Like a dusty photo seen blurred and distorted. Then as quick as it came, it was gone.
My body felt numb and raw. The caressing blades were now sharp and painful, a thousand spears penetrating my flesh. The ants were gone and the skies were an alabaster grey, the sun painfully bright in my eyes and moving in swift jerking movements across the skies. I became aware of an icy tinge in my wrist and a feeling of compression across my chest. My new senses had betrayed me, showing me a new respect for pain. And now that I wanted to move, to squirm off of the needles below me and the scorching sun above, I could not.
I am a prisoner, subject to the horrid elements with a new appreciation for the pain they wrought. In the midst of my agony I hear it, piercing my ears like the screams of a thousand children. Carefully measured in rhythm, leaving me with the expectancy of the pain to come. Over and over they rip the flesh of my ears anew, allowing it to heal for a moment before the onslaught continues.
The pain seems to dull, but not truly. I am simply becoming accustomed to the fact that it is all I am. The constant prickling of blades on my skin, and the heat that boils the blood protruding from my wounds. And the noise, the horrid noise in its sinister rhythm, ever-present and omniscient. It seems natural, a pattern uncontrollable by human will; instinctual, like breathing.
Breathing; the simplest and most basic of survival instincts, we are born with it hardwired into our systems. Newborns can perform this sacred action without intricacy, but I cannot. I did not know I should breathe; the need did not make itself known. But now that I remember, I feel a burning in my core, the rear of my throat runs dry and cracks, blood moistening the raw skin; blisteringly hot.
I feel a tug at my most inner being, a stretching sensation that dulls the pain in my back; anesthetizes me. I slowly slip downward and yet in every other direction at the same time. I am pulled thin, I can feel the holes ripping in my essence, but I am leaving this place, death is welcome, I think. Little do I know the irony I have created.
I take in my first breath in a sharp gasp and shudder as I hear the sound, repeating, high pitched and painful to my virgin ears. But now it is not alone, accompanied by a dull sloshing thud, reverberating deep inside me and spreading the ice through my veins. The haphazard sun still twitches above and I let out a moan of defeat realizing my wish of death would never be true, I would be trapped forever. But the moan contradicted its very origin. The audible sound that left my lips was preceded by ten thousand silent screams of pain and agony. The filaments became visible in the sun, and so did the unsteady white hands that held it. The blades had become bothersome wrinkles in rough plastic-like sheets, and the sound…. A steady pulse from a nearby machine.