I think I lost my head (can you make me a new one)

ch.1 he who has no name

♤
the earliest memory he has is one of darkness.

not the regular nighttime kind of darkness, but a thick, smooth, choking darkness that fills his nose and mouth and would probably fill his lungs too, if he had lungs.

for a while, all he knows is the darkness.

.

at times, they take him out of the darkness. strong hands hold him up while he desperately gasps for air, coughing up bits of dark liquid.

he does not need to breathe. he has no lungs after all, how could he possibly breathe?
still, something in his brain tells him that he needs to breathe, and that things are seriously wrong if he isn't breathing.

it hurts, when they take him out of the darkness. it always does.

he doesn't know who "they" are, for the hands that drag him away are always gloved, and the faces they belong to always covered. he does, however, have a feeling they are different hands each time around.

the hands drag him to a room, where he is tied down on a table with thick metal clasps, squinting his eyes against the light flooding his vision.

sometimes, he tries to struggle against the hands. there is a flash of light from the heavy metal collar around his neck, and his body promptly goes limp. he quickly learns struggling serves no results.

when on the table, he gets probed and poked and disassembled and occasionally reassembled in a completely different way, conscious only a part of the time.

they never ask him how he feels. of course they don't. he is but a mere piece of machinery. scrap bits of metal cannot feel emotions. they made quite sure of that.

they shine bright light in his eyes, pull at his tounge, stick him so full of syringes he almost resembles a porcupine, carve up flesh and solder skin against metal.

sometimes, he screams. he used to scream a lot more, that is, until they tore out his vocal chords and replaced them with mechanical ones.
now, he only screams when they've forgotten to turn them off.

.

on some days, he isn't taken to the room with the table, but rather to a bright, larger space with cushioned walls and floor. this time, he isn't tied down, but rather put in the center of the room, where he is left as they retreat to being shadowy figures behind murky glass. so close, yet so unreachable.

he can only stare in horror as his legs, with stuttering movements, make him walk circles around the room.
he finds himself dreading these days more than the tests on the table.

there is something so inherently wrong about the feeling of your body being puppeteered by an outside force, strung up like a corpse in silk strings.

.

being in the darkness, there is no movement, no thoughts or feelings. only the cool, calm pressure of the liquid surrounding his body. it is the unmoving centre of peace in a world filled with bright lights and loud noises and sharp objects digging into his skin.

it is no proper home, but it is the closest thing a to home that he has.

and so, his life goes on.