I Am the Reaper

Heedful Hook

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*******

Two

~ Heedful Hook ~

The world is bleeding. It's wounded, like a dying animal, bathed in its own blood. Red is everywhere. I can taste it on my tongue, coppery and thick like oil. The stones are oozing crimson and I have to close my eyes to keep from seeing it.

Fury mounts inside me, a wild anger that I'm helpless against. I slam my fists against the wall, accepting the distant throb of pain, but that's all it brings. The world stays red.

I want out of this. Out. Out. Out. Out.

If I could tear down the walls myself I would. If I could bend steel I'd break through that door and take out those that did this to me; whatever this is. Maybe they've done nothing. Have I always been this way?

I grind my teeth in frustration, jaw clenched so hard I feel a tooth crack. Over the last few days, the forty two seconds have been stretched to minutes; two hundred and thirty of them to be exact. Nearly four hours I'm forced to wait for the syringe's dose. I expect every day to die before the suits come for me, but I don't. Though the hunger makes me feel like I'm burning from the inside out, it doesn't let my heart stop. If anything it makes it beat faster, stronger, until I actually believe I can knock the door from its hinges. My arms are mottled in bruises from trying.

But worst of all is the silence in my own head. It's too quiet and I imagine this is how a body must feel like without its soul. It makes me feel like a shell, like a living echo quickly fading in the distance.

Two hundred and one.

I bang my fists against the walls, letting my head rest on the stone. When the pain starts to numb my hands, I rap my forehead against it instead, desperate to feel somethingother than the pangs stabbing at me. I want my mind off the feeling, but I have nothing to distract myself with. There's the red and the hunger and the pain. Everything else has been pulled from me. I've departed from the walls to become a palpable shadow. A Grim Reaper of the suits' own making.

A grating noise sounds to my right and my eyes drop to the origin of it. There's a small panel at the base of the door and the metal screeches with age as it slides open. A plastic tray is pushed through, laden with a portion of venison and a small cup of water. No fork. I glower. I guess if I'm an animal now I'm expected to eat like one, too. But I don't crave food.

I crave the red.

In one swift movement, I'm at the tray and I garb the glass cup. I hurl it against the wall and it fractures into a hundred pieces, scattering across the floor like diamonds. Water droplets decorate my arms. I do the same to the tray, but it doesn't break like the cup, so I smash it against the door instead. I want it to shatter. To hurt. I want to feel it broken in my hands, unfixable and ruined.

It takes a few tries, but I do it. The one piece of plastic snaps into two and I'm left, breathing heavily, with the jagged parts of it gripped in my hands.

So maybe I can't break down the suits' door. But I can break their tray.

*******

The days drag by. Or I think it's days, but it's hard to tell. Every passing one is the same, except for the lengthening intervals between doses. They've switched my glass cup to a steel one, but those are the only noticeable differences. I still wait. I still crave, but it's getting harder to control myself when the hours are finally up and the suits come for me. I think they use the device more often but it's hard to sort through it with the ever-growing hunger.