"stop", i scream" get off me!". the tight grip of the hands of nurses and jail guards were pulling away at my legs and my arms to stop me resisting the un-marked injection the regime doctor had pointed at me. "i'm not sick! there's nothing wrong with me", but of course i knew that would not stop them, they hadn't given me medicine to stop as malaria had almost finished me off in prison two years ago- of course this injection was not for my welfare, it would have to be some new form of torture. The regime had become increasingly desperate in thier attempts to extract any information following the riots-turned-attacks on the high towers of wiltern, i had learnt in jail by a smuggled letter. I wondered why they would even bother to try to get some sort of confession anymore, they could fake it along with the rest of the procedures- they were the judge, the jury and the executioner; in addition to playing the victim. That was one of the ways they tried to get to you, to remind you that they were everyone.
I twist and turn my stretched out body and try to escape the hands that are keeping me from the ground, i scream, not because i'm scared but to make the doctor s feel like the little fucker he is, to make all of the people who are pulling on me feel discomfort, to make sure that that it's them who can't sleep at night, not me. if they would try to torture me then i would torture them. i had lied claiming that i wasn't sick, i had a brutal fever that i was battling for days but i didn't want to give myself the false hope that they were providing me treatment to stop that throbbing headache and nausea. In fact, i had stopped reporting to the jailer anymore whenever i was sick , not because i knew it would do me no good- that they would never help, i had always known that, but i had used to file my sickness avidly earlier during my term in jail just as a form of civil disobedience but now it was better them not knowing of my weaknesses.
A nurse pulled on my shirt to reveal my bony stomach and pinched tightly to mark the spot where the injection would go. I let out another set of screams and screwed my body around , my heart thumped abruptly and i could feel the heart-beats across my body. My violent shaking got the better of one of the guards holding my right foot and i managed to free it for a moment, taking a quick breath i wait as the guard rushes in to recapture it so i can release a fierce kick at his nose which causes a crushing noise as it hits. Blood pours out of his nose like a tap and i know instantly that i have broken his nose or some bone in it, but before he can clean away at the blood i place my foot obediently into his hands, forcing him to carry on with his broken nose infront of the other regime workers.I take quick breaths and trump my heart rate, slowing it down and trying to compose myself internally- a minor victory when i get it to slow. Before i can look down to my stomach, i feel the needle force it's way into me and i know that whatever was inside that injection is inside me now, coursing through my body and changing me, to become slightly more controllable to the regime.
I shiver and a slight tremor moves across my body, my stomach seems to contract at the place of the needle and my nausea stops for a moment so i manage a last struggle against my jailers but the nausea rushes over me again in an instant and i hold back a sudden urge to vomit. My stomach seems to have turned to water and i have no control over myself as i excrete everything inside me, a dark patch forms on the thin cloth of my pants. I close my eyes, i don't want the jailers and nurses to see me like this, i'm sweating profusely and my ass feels wet and mushy from the shit in my pants. My throat pushes vomit from my stomach into my mouth but i quickly swallow it back, flinching at the warm bile moving back down my throat. Someone mumbles something but i don't understand where it's coming from or even what they're saying and i vomit again this time being unable to stop it in my mouth and it comes out like a geyser and spills all over my breasts and dribbles onto my neck, i hope that it hits my torturers in the face. i hear the sound of something being dragged into the room and then i feel myself being lowered into it, i'm sitting on a wooden chair.
They strap some cloth around my hands to keep them in place and i open my eyes but feel them immedietly droop unvoluntarily, i vomit again and this time with alot more force that i feel could possible reach the other side of my small cell. When i open my eyes i see that my vomit has covered a nurse's face, and i fight a small smile, my left eye is still drooping but the minor happiness seems to stir my body into more control. The doctor looks furious and is shouting at one of my jailers, i try to listen though there is a ringing sound in my ears that is making it incredibly difficult too. 'you're sitting on your own shit' a part of me reminds me, but i ignore the voice- it belongs to the older me. A voice of me that did not know how much i would take to protect democracy in my nation.
"sir believe me, i didn't know she was sick, she showed no signs of it i swear. She would have mentioned it to us, please sir", my jailer seems to be pleading for his life
"Don't lie to me, you bitch, are you an intelligence officer or a donkey? you've messed up the entire operation, who knows if she'll survive it?", the doctor replied. My suspicions he proved were correct, my jailers were intelligence officers who were spying on me. A touch of irritation and fury hits me, why the fuck would they spy on me when i'm already in a cell? What could i possibly organize from inside my cell? The doctor pushes the jailer onto the floor and kicks at him until he's taken away from guards rushing in from the ward entrance. They seem confused that they're taking the jailer away and they glance over at me, had they expected that it was me who had somehow escaped?
"He's telling the truth. I didn't tell them anything, i hid all the symptoms from them, i acted perfectly healthy"
They all stop and look at me and before i wonder why, i realize that it was me who had said that. I didn't understand how that had slipped my mouth or why i would say it but the doctor seems to be smiling, his smile reads excitement and anticipation but also like a pressure was taken off his shoulders. He pulls out a smartphone camera from his pocket and hands it to a nurse who aims the camera at me. He comes in close and bends so that his face is in line with mine. I try to compose myself, make myself look stronger than i am, take a gulp in so that i dont accidentally spew peices of vomit when i talk- i have to look good if the camera is recording, this video will be spread across the people and i need to give them hope and strength.
"are you a terrorist?", he asks. His face is mature, probably 25 years old, if so then he has seen the world before the oppression. He had know a world of freedom, but did he care? Under this system, he and others like him have been allowed to thrive but in the world that i was told off, people would compete for jobs and not be handed them because of thier race.
"no", i answer, "i am the leader of the opposition of a party that no longer exists. I have never fired a single weapon in my life". All of which i said was completely true. The doctor cursed under his breath,he appeared confused- this was not the answer he wanted. He starts to speak again but this time i can't hear anything that comes from his mouth, i look around and i hear no sounds and when i look down at myself i see red botches appearing on my arms, i furrow my eyebrows. My stomach contracts and i let out a large scream at the pain in my stomach, i can't breathe and i try to move my chest in a way to get my lungs to move because i seem to have lost the ability to inhale. i panick and i can't stop screaming and my stomach contracts sharply again and i burst out black vomit from my mouth and my eyes droop again and i lose control of my body. i sit paralyzed. soon my conciousness drifts as well.
Moments of conciousness drift in and out and i watch as scenes like from a movie play out infront of me, me being carried in an ambulance,doctors injecting me with drugs, more doctors taking blood samples. I hear them talk about words like radiation, serum, truth and virus. My body is on fire and i don't understand what's happening to me. I drift away, and i find myself holding hands with my parents, i'm a young girl again-10 years old. My parents seem to tower over me and thier hands are pillows, a priveldge i am not used to any more. I rip my hands away from them and i run away from them and the world seems to materialize around me. i'm running around the president's building and my parents are chasing me, they're laughing but i'm screaming. i must stay strong i tell myself. I turn a corner but my parents seem to be behind the corner and i run into thier arms, they hug at me and kiss me. I am defeated and i collapse into thier love and tears fill me. Five more years and this girl will lose both her parents. Another 3 years and she'll be here, fighting for her life.
