Shell shock

Chapter 8 failure

William sat in the chair. Strapped in like a violent criminal. He wiggled about still listening to the pro war propaganda. He was alone in the room. Emptiness filled his body as he was forced to continuously watch propaganda. His cries for help weren't answered and he felt more isolated, more distant from himself, more subservient to the government than he ever was in the war.
So yes he may not be consumed by his actions in the war, but he is now consumed by this memory. Lack of socialising can damage a man worse than the horror of conflict. At Least then he had people to share his story with. Even if they are gone. It's just Will. Solitary and seeking freedom.
The door swings open and out walks Daveed saying, "Mr Owen, we hope the treatment has worked we are told that this is all we can keep you here for so this is goodbye."
William just stared blankly at the projector.
"William? Are you ok?" Daveed spoke slowly, almost intimidated.
William remained stationary. His eyes are as blank as a winter sky.
"Turn the projector off!" Daveed cried, "Mr Owen, are you ok?" He turned toward the other doctor and spoke thus, "is this the cure you spoke off! He is nothing but a zombie." Daveed looked in shame at his creation.
"There are side effects. He shall be ok in a few hours." The doctor spoke as he gestured for others to wheel William out of the room into his previous holding cell.
"What have I done?" Daveed looked at his hands. "Do you not have the colour red smeared amongst your fingertips?"
"No but I suggest you wash them, you won't be able to mentally." The doctor spoke in a descending tone. Slow and monotone.
The doctor left as Daveed looked around the room. He saw the torture he had put his patient through.
"I vowed to bring no harm to my patients. Instead I made Mr Owen my subject." He looked down in disbelief.
He looked at a medical pan on the side next to where William had been tortured. He observed the equipment. Sharp instruments that could cut through scales. Morphine to remove the pain. Remove the pain he now felt.
Daveed gripped the morphine and plunged multiple doses into his bloodstream. The last he spoke was.
"William, I am sorry." As his corpse crashed against the cobbled ground and cracked his bone.
Meanwhile an almost lobotomized William lies idly in his chamber. Almost robotic. Eyes wide. A smile etched ear to ear. He was no longer the troubled adult that had been taken here against his will. He was nothing but an empty vessel consumed now only by the same propaganda that plagued him into dressing up as a soldier. However this machine must now venture home. To his old life.
William rose to his padded prison. An old doctor sat at the foot of his bed on a wooden rocking chair. The same who spoke to Daveed.
"William, my name is doctor Bernard." He spoke calmly. "I oversaw your treatment, this is because I have become intrigued, so you say, by psychiatry post war."
He spoke with elegance and charm. He sat rocking back and forth. Almost paralysed yet not.
"I had a dream one day, you know william. I wanted the world to be rid of the pandemic we call emotion and trauma. The best way to do this is to cut it out like a cancer, remove it from the root. You're a man of culture I am sure you understand." Bernard spoke with authority and wisdom. He paused for a minute before standing up mechanically and yet effortlessly asif his age had not affected his joints. "In a few hours you shall be able to roam freely. You may have trouble forming formulaic sentences but by the time you arrive home you will be better than you were before 1914, good chap."
After he said that he grabbed a cane and exerted the room whistling and walking with a rhythm. Meanwhile the corpse of a young man rotted on the bed and idolised the ceiling.