[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY TWENTY-ONE

The pattern was so obvious. I only had to wield it.

LOG OS: 

I wake up.

I don’t remember much. 

I read Logos and am reminded.

I don’t write. 

I thirst.

I swig the water but hold it in my mouth. 

I crawl into bed and lay face down in my pillow. Just long enough to expel. I roll over, my shiny bald head sopped into the crush of wet feathers sheathed inside a cotton case.

I close my eyes. 

I count and breathe slowly.

298 Mississippi 

299 Mississippi

300 Mississippi 

301 Mississippi — the lights flick off

697 Mississippi 

698 Mississippi

699 Mississippi — the door clicks 

I suppress a twitch. I hear the jingling of keys and a set of footprints walk in as the light flicks on again. A man's grisly voice slurs with a swampland twang: “How now, brown cow?”

I wait for someone to respond to the speaker. But then I realize: he must be addressing me. It’s Fill and I can’t risk opening my eyes to see what he looks like. 

Fill’s footprints stop at the head of the bed, and unseen hands fiddle with what must be a lock mechanism for soon the bed pulls away from the wall.

The bed lurches, and swings and I am gliding. A cold breeze rushes in on the stagnate room as Fill sings a tune I’m unfamiliar with. “Let me tell you the story ‘bout Minnie the Moocher…" 

Lights float over me as I try not to stir. Electric currents course through my body. I’m certain Fill will notice the goose bumps on my arms as we swing round a corner and my flesh begins to crawl.

The rat runs wild in my stomach like it’s being chased towards a trap with poisoned cheese. 

Fill must notice something is up. He slows down my carriage and bears down on me. I can make out his shadow through my lids, his head hinged to mine, and I suppress the instinct to pinch my eyes shut.

“What are you up to?” he asks with a voice greased with the sound of motorcaws. 

989 Mississippi

990 Mississippi 

He stares down at me for a moment, but then jingles the keys again.

My heart starts to thump. I hear the turning of the handle. What am I so afraid of? And how can I be afraid of something I don’t even remember what it is? 

At the head of my bed again, I feel Fill over me. He grips either side of my pillow. The dry edges, I pray.

998 Mississippi 

I can smell the man of him now. Somehow, I know it is a smell I have bathed in in the past.

999 Mississippi 

Fill presses down over me. His lips and jaw sandpaper my face, sweep over my lips and then kiss each of my fluttering eyelids. I grip the sides of my bed to keep myself from punching him in the jaw.

I can’t believe he doesn’t hear the pounding of my heart, see it beating violently against my chest. But it’s not Fill I’m afraid of. I’m numb to his attention. It’s the door that scares me. Or, rather, the total blackness behind it. 

Then his lips are at my ear: “Remember, they can’t break you. You are indestructible. You will live through this. You just gotta live through it.”

Then he pushes the foot of the bed against the door. 

“Go get ‘em tiger,” he says as he begins to wheel me in. I can feel the rat dig his heels into the walls of my stomach, and scramble up my esophagus, clawing its way through my throat and out my teeth. 

I scream. A rat’s cry. But the scream never ends as I bolt up in bed and start clawing at my skin.

Slam! — Fill has rammed my shoulder back against the bed. I open my eyes as Fill is strapping my wrists down with his tattooed arms. I look up at his calico-colored spiky head as I continue to scream. His pug nose flares under intense green saucer eyes. Silver piercings in his chin, nose and ears glint under the fluorescent lights as his mouth is drawn in a firm line. He draws over to the foot of the bed to grab a hold of a wild free leg but not before I manage to kick him in the teeth. 

How I hear the footsteps running over my scream, I will never know. Fill draws down his ruddy pasty face down to mine with bleeding gums and whimpers, “What have you got yourself into now, baby doll?”

More men in white jumpsuits appear. They help Fill strap my legs down. It takes four of them to do it, which makes me glad. 

“How the hell did this happen?” a reedy man’s voice crisply inquires. I look up, and “Doctor Darling” appears, according to the pin on his white lab coat. The Doc is a thin white man with a fringe of grey hair around his skull and narrow features. He reminds me of an icicle.

“She didn’t drink her meds,” Fill huffs. Fill’s arms and hands wrap around my head, neck and torso and pin me down. The blood from his mouth drips all around me. A single drop falls onto the breast of my snow white jumpsuit and spreads outward. 

“I saw her myself, don’t be stupid,” the Doc hisses as he pricks me with a stinging needle.

Fill lets me go to thrust the wet pillow into Darling’s hands the way a proud father would who shows off his kid’s latest drawing. 

I feel my muscles relax against my will as Darling says, “Hmm. Well, no doubt she would have forgotten all about this escapade by tomorrow.”

But he is wrong, I do remember. Perhaps, it is vivid because the memory is so violent. Or perhaps missing that one glass interrupts whatever it is they are doing to me. Or perhaps it is because I was full of fear. 

“Now,” Doc Darling says impatiently, “Shall we get started?”

Fill reluctantly wipes blood from his mouth onto his uniform. 

He is at the head of my bed, wheeling me in but now his hands tremble.

My eyes look up at him and plead, but he refuses to greet them. Soon my voice stops working and the screams can only rattle around inside the cage of my head before the blackness overtakes me. The last thing I remember is Fill’s finger pinching my earlobe as if to give me a burst of courage.

My throat is on fire now and I will drink. And then I will sleep. Like a good little girl. 

I don’t want to be conscious for whatever it is they do to me in that room.

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