The Colony

The Colony

There exists no adjective which can justify the way I am feeling right. Description cannot possibly be achieved at this time. I am aware of what is going on but still, I can't open my eyes. My name is Ferrel. My birthday is April 7th, 2128. I'm in surgery. I don't know how log I've been under. Doc has never been spot on when administering anesthesia drugs before operating. He's operated on me few times and it seems that every time I go under his knife, one of two things will happen. I will either wake up too soon, or I will consciously wake up first, but not physically. This is one of those times. Doc may have a perfect record in messing up the whole "putting me under" part of this process, which may have caused me to wake up once while under the knife. Dammit, that's not right. Waking up while I was under the knife did happen. I remember feeling nothing. It was only the sight of Doc cutting away at the inside of my arm that bothered me. Yeah, now I remember. That was the surgery where he removed all of the muscle tissue from my dead arm. My arm. Oh yeah...I kind of drifted of there. What's going on? O.K. wait, yeah...I know why I'm here. I'm having my arm removed. My dead arm.

According to Doc, three years of intravenous drug use with "dirty" needles, in "unsanitary" environments had finally taken its toll. Doc called it perfectly, right from the start. As soon I started reusing my needles, he was on my ass. He warned me countless times over three years about how my "dirty" needles, and these "unsanitary" conditions will eventually cause devastating health issues. "Dirty" and "unsanitary" were relative terms to my understanding; just opinions. It didn't matter, really. The fact of that matter was that I needed needles to stab that junk into my arm, and I would've used any needle to do so, regardless of its sanitary condition. This is how I thought, and what I did for almost three years; until the veins in my left arm started to rot. Three weeks later I was in surgery- for the second time, getting all the muscle tissue in my left arm removed.

My arm had lost all functionality. It had gotten to the point where it would just hang off my shoulder limply and uselessly. The arm itself, had begun to discolor. What used to be a pale and normal Caucasian skin tone, has now achieved unnatural colors of tone. My skin's pigment sank into deep shades of. Some sort of secondary color...maybe? The color was definitely a combination of colors. The way I saw it, my arm was the manifestation of what it would probably look like if the adjective "rancid" could be used to describe something you could see- as opposed to its correct use which only describes taste and smell.- You looking at my, meant you were seeing something rancid. Something so nasty and foul looking, that it could single-handedly take a word only used to describe taste and smell and give a whole new meaning simply by just using it. The word is used incorrectly, but fits for some reason and it just makes sense. This "rancid" tone deepened even more over the course of a week. The color changed again, turning deep shades of blue-black and purple-black. These colors always reminded me of what a bruised area on someone's body looks like posthumously. After gravity moves the blood from the bruised area to the body's lowest point, and the process of lividity starts. I my mind, the bruised area on this body that I had imagined was the exact same color of my left arm the day before commencing its amputation. You could clearly see the dead veins surfacing in the rotting flesh. The arm had to go.

I can't open my eyes or my mouth. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm dead. I can't be dead...that wouldn't make any sense at all. I am almost completely aware of everything I should know. My mind is consciously waking my other senses. I am starting to sense smell. I smell sterile air and antiseptic, I know I'm Doc's operating room. I am trying to move my tongue around in my mouth...no, I can't even get it to twitch. I am trying to sense anything at all in my left side. I'm curious about my dead arm, it couldn't still be there. In no way can I accept that. Wait, hold that thought...O.K...yes, my eyes are opening. My vision is way too blurred to focus on anything. This isn't bothering me at the moment, because my blurred vision is coming into focus at a noticeable pace. In another few moments I'll be able to at least see things such as my own body parts, or where my body parts should be.