Crying Metal

Chapter 6: Fog

I was scared. I was very scared, those first few seconds crawled by as the men with blank, guarded faces hurried in and stabbed a needle full of a calming liquid into my arm. I knew that's what the soft purple fluid was, because my mind began to uncoil like a forcibly relaxed creature, softening and spreading out.

My guard was down.

Thoughts were fuzzy and cloudy. I recall shaking my head slowly, in vain, as if trying to move in a pool of mud that was over my head. I saw white-coated blurs of movement placing me on table after table. It could have lasted minutes or weeks as I moved through those rooms. Eternity felt imminent.

The whitewashed walls became sources of nightmares. The faces glaring down at me grew long fangs dripping liquid the color of the injected fluid as I moved from room to room hooked to a table. Their eyes were blank expanses of grey. Grey. It was all blank and grey. Small shocks of color, like the startling sight of blue-rimmed uniforms of Society officials, burst on my eyelids like exploding stars.

My subconsciousness only barely yielded the sweating lucid dreaming as a familiar pale face rose over mine. Blurs covered my arm and I thought I saw a needle being pulled from my skin. Slowly, my mind curled up again, preparing defenses. I began to notice details once more: Dr. Salle's smooth, blank, pale skin, the minimalistic design of the hospital room, the startling way the doctor's eyes bored into mine.

"Welcome, dear," he purred.