The Dreadful Dreamer's Collection

Under My Skin- April 8th, 2022

I volunteered myself to be a subject in the front of the lecture hall. All of the lights were turned off, save for the front one which dimly lit the center of the room. My small, fragile professor motioned me to anxiously join her at the front, below the dim yellow light. I walked ever nearer to the front, wondering what I had volunteered myself for. When I turned around to face my peers, all of the seats were empty where about thirty souls once sat mindlessly taking notes. Puzzled, I looked at my professor in confusion.

"It's for a little experiment, you don't mind if they practice on you?" Two ladies only a few years my elder, entered from the blind side of the room and sat me down in a sticky, plastic maroon chair. They wore face masks and carried a metal tray. It all was happening too fast for me to fight, to resist and say something. The one lady ripped the jeans I wore from my legs and swabbed my inner left thigh with an alcohol patch, while the other prepared a needle full of fluid with a tube attached to the back. My arms became restrained to the arms of the chair as though I was facing death by electrocution.

"Easy, breath. . ." The one who sterilized my leg watched on as the other, a smaller, blonde lady, injected the syringe into my leg and fed the tube through my skin, pushing it down towards my knee ever so slowly. I cried and screamed. I writhed in pain as it burned, like a snake, burrowing down under my skin, into my kneecap. Suddenly the world around me faded to black, and I was privileged enough to have fainted before I endured the pain any longer.

I woke up in a hammock, facing a porthole window. Outside was black, but the water shone navy in contrast to the abysmal sky. My head hurt, but nothing quite hurt as bad as my leg, which remained raised where they had placed the tube under my skin. I slinked drowsily off of the hammock to my right side, so that I could baby my left leg where the tube resided. Beneath me was thick, wide planks with splinters and nails sticking out like loose hairs. I hobbled gently to my left where there was a door and a light emitting from within. Before I entered the door, I had realized that I was wearing a patient's gown and an orange hospital band around my wrist. Once I entered the room, I quickly understood it as a facility of some sort. There were people pacing about in pristine white lab coats and gloves. Tubes, vials, and machines I could not name lined both sides of the wall and were separated into cubicles by glass. Dazed, I stood looking on with a blank stare. My professor caught sight of me and rushed over to my side.

"What are you doing up?" She carefully interrogated as she led me away from the laboratory and back to my hammock in the dingy corner.

"What time is it?" I groaned. She stood in front of me, insisting I take a seat from where I woke.

"It's 5:30 or 8:00. Why?" She lowered her wrist from her sight with a sniffle.

"I have an exam today! I missed it!" I increasingly became upset, so much so that I began to cry.

"Don't worry about it. . ." She trailed on rather annoyed, though she knew she could not help my situation. I wiped my tears and sighed.

"How is your leg?" She kindly questioned. Not knowing how it was myself, I lifted my gown and revealed a swollen, bloody wrapped leg. Tints of yellow and purple exploded across my ashen white skin like lighting, and the patterns danced their way down my leg.

"Why did they do this?" I was horrified, but nonetheless expectant of what the aftermath of the torture would look like.

"It will make sense, just don't fight it." From her lab coat pocket she withdrew a neon aqua-colored liquid and began to loosen the bandage around my leg.

"No. . . what are you doing to me?" I tried pulling myself away, but the drug coursing through my body told me otherwise. I tried hitting her, but what resulted was a slow, weak punch up into the open air. In my leg, she revealed a port of some sort that was part of my skin. She flipped open the cap and poured the contents of the neon vial into the hole which ran its way down my entire thigh and to my knee. The pain was so hot that it felt ice cold. I howled out in pain as she tucked the bandage back properly and left me in my hammock, rocking it side to side from my hollering. Once again, the world around me faded out into black nothingness.

I awoke for the second time, but a quick breeze stirring around me prohibited any rest. Instead of lazily coming to, I bolted upright and looked around me paranoid. Somehow I had been transported onto a rollercoaster. The sun was on the verge of rising in the distance, but the theme park lights below me lit up the area with artificial daylight. The park was empty, save for myself. Eerie amusement park music hummed from nearby speakers, causing my adrenaline to spike into a sweat. Pulling into the station was a relief, but as I attempted to undo my safety buckle, it simply would not unlatch. Again and again, the rollercoaster went around. Again and again, I could not escape.