The Girl beside the Door

Bonus : I'm not Dead (Really Long)

I am not dead.

I used to think of that as a good thing. I remember, whenever I was having a bad day, or if I was just in a bad mood, I used to close my eyes and remind myself that it could be worse. I used to remind myself that I wasn't dead.

Back then I believed that death was the worst thing that could happen to a person. I actually believed that.

Now I say the same words, every morning when I wake up. I am not dead. And I weep.

Or maybe I don't. I guess it depends on how you define the word. If weeping is an action of the soul, a deep and bitter howling of the mind, if weeping is an emotional pit, then I weep. If weeping is the actual physical process of crying and wailing, then I don't.

I can't.

#

"Good Morning, Mr. Winston."

It's the nurse with the freckles, Amelia. She's my favorite, she talks to me while she works. The only other person who talks to me anymore is an old preacher who comes by about once a month and reads a chapter out of the Bible before moving on to the next room.

Amelia opens the curtains letting the morning sun in, then gets to work. She checks me over for any changes, switches out bags here and there, all the while telling me about her date with her boyfriend the night before.

I try to focus on her words, immerse myself in the moment. I know what comes next, and the only peace I can give myself is in blocking that knowledge from my mind, pushing it away.

Or at least try to.

Eventually she picks up my chart and looks at it, shaking her head.

"Still with the samples. I swear, Mr. Winston, as long as we've been doing this, the doctor probably has more of you bagged up in his lab than in this room."

It isn't the first time she's told that joke, but I'd laugh if I could. It's probably true. Every morning for the last four years the nurses have been taking samples from me. Hair, saliva, urine, blood, skin. From what Amelia's told me, and from what I've overheard, there are five other patients who have the same treatment as me. All from the same doctor. It's an odd treatment, according to everyone who works here, but he's an odd man. A genius, they say, but an odd man.

So they follow his instructions. After all, why would a doctor give his patient a treatment he didn't need?

They even say he's had some success. I don't know how that can be, but sometimes I dream . . . .

After she collects the samples, the treatment begins. In my head I'm shouting. Screaming. Jumping off the bed and racing towards the door.

In the real world, I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling as she rubs an alcohol swab over the inside of my arm, and prepares the first injection.

It feels like someone started a fire beneath my skin. The liquid spreads through my body, and I feel every second of it. The world becomes hazy and the pain is so intense that for a while I can't feel anything else. I can't see, or hear, or smell, or taste. The entire world is burning, and for a brief moment I believe, as I do every morning, that this time they went to far, and I'm finally dead.

It isn't until the second injection that I know I'm wrong. The second injection feels, for lack of a better word, heavy. My muscles cramp under the strain and my limbs ache, like they're being dragged down, through the bed, through the floor, down into the sewers. For the first few seconds the experience is only mildly unpleasant, like lying under a pillow while a fat man sits on top.