The metal table cools my back but I can barely feel it through all my discomforts. My arms and legs lay still on the table, metal bands holding them down. I am able to move my head slightly to the side to see my strapped limbs, and I wonder the real reason of the straps’ placement. My arms are shriveled and limp, like long strands of mottled gray seaweed. My legs are far more unnatural than my arms, summing up to roughly the same size, my thighs spanning about an inch or two wide. Bones-width the man called it. The rest of me is the same: shriveled and thin, like a wet, gray rag thrown off to a corner to mold. My head aches and a trickle of mucus runs down my cheek but the thought of the effort needed to wipe it away with my shoulder makes my head spin.
My head is already spinning, but from the stench that hangs in a cloud above the room. It is filled with many other people…no, experiments all suffering the same plight as I although the cases vary. I can almost feel the cloud sink lower as I breathe, my senses newly awakened. It smells of blood, rotting flesh, and snot. The stench of death is so thick in the air you could cut it. And beneath all of heavy layers, ironically, it smells of sterilization fluid. That sickening smell of bleach. But overall the room smells of Hell.
For me it is Hell, in a way. It’s my biggest fear come true. A nightmare, plain as day. It’s true, the sickness my body is battling right now as a human guinea pig for a deadly virus is devastating. But it’s just a bonus to my night mare. Icing on the cake, if you will. But the part I fear the most is the emotional battle my body is facing. The way each doctor looks at us as if we are projects, not human beings. There is no love in these stares, just curiosity, a ‘if I do this will this happen?’ kind of stare. We are not real, just easily replaceable test subjects. It is also know that when I die, I will be a failed project. No one is there to mourn for me, or keep me remembered in their hearts. I will vanish. I will be, and perhaps already am, forgotten.
The man comes in. he is a doctor, his long white coat reaching almost to his knees. He walks over to my table with his clipboard. He looks at me, his eyes deadpan as he completes the task he was sent in here to complete. His eyes hold no warmth as he scans my broken body, checking an occasional box, walking the occasional loop to the other side. We he does walk he is careful not to step on other patients. The ones without beds. But it is not carefully or sensitively. It his so he doesn’t get his work shoes dirty or get blood on his pants.
He converses with another man for a while. One wearing a tie, and obviously his superior. Their heads are leaned close together and their eyes often flit towards me for a second before looking back into the others. The man with the coat starts pointing feverishly at his clipboard, acknowledging several points on my exam. I know the discussion is not good. But I am helpless and can do nothing.
The man walks back over and looks into my eyes. It seems his have gone deader. Not from my pain or suffering, but from the thought of failing at another…project. He raises a needle.
I have never been afraid of dying. But to me, it was like dying when I saw this man’s eyes looking down at me the first day in this hell. It was the emotion in his eyes, but rather the lack of. I used to scream but my voice is now too weak. The needle goes in. I cry, not from the sting of the needle, but from the sting of the one’s face who is holding it. My mind fogs but before I go I have to tell this man something. So I address him in the only way I know how. I suck in my breath and one word escapes my mouth before the kiss of death seals my lips forever: daddy.

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Text: taylor pinderson
Publication Date: 07-31-2012

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