Smooth Skin

For months, I’ve been crying myself to sleep. I’m so fucking stupid for ever signing up for this godforsaken program. All I got was locked inside this sterile, padded room and three lukewarm meals a day. Seven months for what I’ve been counting with the mashed peas I’ve stuck on the wall.

The program was advertised as paid clinical trials for a brand-new ‘revolutionary’ antidepressant discovered somewhere deep in the ocean. It’s not like they found pills in the Mariana Trench, more like they found a plant that they figured out how to synthesize.

Like most of the US population nowadays, depression has always been a problem for me. I’ve tried countless different medications, none proving successful. Like they say, one must imagine Sisyphus happy, right?

There’s not a whole lot to do in here, so I get up from bed to begin my monthly remodeling. I walk over to the provided small, white table and lift it up. As I’m dragging it over to the bed, I trip on something sharp.

“FUCK!” I yowl, clutching my foot as I awkwardly hop-tumble back onto the padded floor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the bright crimson dribbling out of me. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in seven months, so vibrant and rich with pigmentation. It was color. Bright, beautiful red color! I began to jump up and down in sheer euphoria. Wholly neglecting the glass shard drilling itself deeper inside my flesh with each ecstatic landing. I only stop because I hear the alarm for breakfast.

It’s utterly, viscerally consuming. I honestly don’t think there are words in any human language to describe it. It’s just this soul-shaking screeching, literally. Every time they’ve played it since I got here, my blood has begun to buzz as if it were my phone. It sends me to my knees in nanoseconds, and I can feel my ears begin to bleed.

“Plea ep erwar, subject Thirty-Seven” A static, muffled voice rings out from above. God I hate these goddamn intercom systems, I can’t ever make anything out. Thankfully, I know enough at this point to begin making my way towards the delivery chute.

“Subject Thirty-Seven, please turn around and step backwards onto the slide-out scale.” A computerized female voice instructs me at the chute as a small metal platform ejects through the wall, floating out just over the padded floor. I comply, not wanting a repeat of week two, turning around and stepping back.

“Please return the tray and syringes within sixty minutes.”

My eyes began welling up with tears as the tray of three full syringes, scrambled eggs, and rotten bacon slides out onto the serving counter.

They had originally started me out on a daily total of 0.1 mcg—of what they called—‘Maritaxine B’ or ‘MXB’ if you want to be fun with it. Now I’ve been on 6 mcg every day, three times a day. To put it lightly, I’ve been to hell and back. That feeling, there’s nothing else like it on earth. I’m pretty sure I can safely say it comes straight from the depths of hell. It’s changing me, and not just physically—mentally. I keep having these surreal nightmares about falling through a giant stone spiral. I never land, just fall for what seems an eternity. Never really had nightmares much before this, but now, it’s so bad I see that goddamned spiral when I’m awake too. Seeping through my mind and glazing over the barren white walls like an ugly wallpaper.

I scoop my hands up under the tray and walk back over to my bed. Sitting on the edge, I notice the glass I stepped on earlier out in the middle of the room. It’s a light-bulb from the ceiling, my blood oozed out all over it.

My heart skips a beat as I notice my blood begin to… pulsate? As it begins to leech off the broken glass shards and slink towards me, I jump backwards—spilling the contents of my tray all over the floor. I freeze in terror as it glides over the eggs and climbs up the side of the bed. Leaving the sheets a pristine white. There’s not much I can do, besides curl my toes away in desperation, as it slides across the sheets up to my foot.

A wave of electricity rushes through my skin as it slides under my left foot, making contact. The glass shard pushing out through my flesh as the blood seeps in, almost in slow-motion. I rush to grasp my foot, trying to get whatever the hell that shit is out of me. But what I find makes my blood run cold. The sole of my foot is perfectly fucking smooth. It’s as if I was never even cut in the first place.

“What the fuckkk” I squeak out under my breath, my heart threatening to burst through my ice cold chest. I sit frozen for a while, desperately grasping at any kind of explanation.

How the fuck? Why would it—No, it can’t. There’s no way that just actually happened. I have to be going insane, I’m probably just hallucinating from being locked in here so long…right? Surely that’s all that’s going on. I brace myself as I look back to the broken light.

It’s completely clean, each shattered fragment its own jagged, crystal clear nightmare. My eyes race back to my foot, noticing the clean piece of glass lying on the bed underneath it. No, no, no, this can’t be fucking happening. It can’t. It just fucking can’t. My head begins to swirl in loops as my vision goes dim. My body begins to go numb and I lean my head back, noticing the timer over the delivery chute.

45:32

45:31

45:30

“Fuck!” I yelp as I throw myself to the edge of the bed, desperately searching for the syringes among my splattered breakfast. As I frantically claw through the eggs, I find them unbroken. Breathing a sigh of relief, I pick them up off the floor, wiping rogue scrambled eggs off the metal tips with my shirt. I set the syringes down next to me on the bed. Pulling my pants down to expose my hip, I reach for one of the syringes.

Taking a deep breath and closing my eyes, I pierce the needle through my skin and into my muscle, wincing as I feel the all too familiar sting of MXB leaking out into my flesh. I quickly grab the second and third needles to repeat the process. I only have about 3 minutes before it takes effect, so I need to work quickly. Once that shit kicks in, I’ll be completely incapacitated for hours. I grab the empty syringes and place them on the tray, scraping my food up onto it as quickly as I can.

Darting over to the delivery chute counter, I barely toss the tray up onto it before my legs turn to stone. Condemning me to the padded floor directly beneath it. As I attempt to crawl towards my bed with my arms, they too begin to freeze. Leaving me helpless, motionless, and face down on the floor. Completely at the whim of Maritaxine-B. And so it begins, my journey into the depths of hell itself.

My heart slows from a strong gallop to barely a crawl as my senses fade away into the void. I try to scream, but my mouth is locked shut. I know what’s coming next and I would give anything to stop it.

Time comes to a stop as my heart does, followed by my breathing. I cannot accurately describe to you what it’s like to be both dead and alive. To be Schrodinger’s human. There’s no other experience I could possibly compare it to that would even begin to make you understand the sensation. It is cosmically excruciating and unfathomably horrifying. My human flesh being torn into infinitesimally smaller pieces as I exist between existence—in a realm I don’t belong, that wasn’t made to cradle my form within it.

Every single fiber of my being ripped apart. Torn from my bones by shadows of things I could only dream to understand.

I can hear them growl and slobber as they rip my flesh clean off my skeleton with their cacophony of gnarled teeth. Desperately clawing and pushing each other out of the way just to get even a small lick of my blood. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet and I’m the most popular dish.

I want to run, I want to be absolutely anywhere but here. I’d even take a sewage tank over this. But I’m frozen, trapped inside this hellish void, helpless to my torture. My intestines being torn apart like sausages, my spine being ripped out and devoured like juicy ribs, my inability to stop any of it. I simply cannot explain how impossibly excruciating it is. I’m so used to being in control, micro-managing every little detail. If I have one fear in life, it’s the total loss of control. I would start crying at this point if I could, but I can’t, so I just try to think happy thoughts.

Once the shadows have devoured all my flesh, they hastily move to bashing in my skull. Stomping and jumping with sharp hooves as they crack it open like a pecan on a hot Georgia sidewalk. Slurping and scooping out my brain like a king with a soft-boiled egg. Their tongues slither through the folds in my brain, lapping up my cerebrospinal fluid like warm soup.

It doesn’t take long for the horde to finish me off, and I’m left behind to rot away. This is what I call—the silence. It’s somehow more silent than silent. I can hear my bones creak and groan as they settle and fall apart, the blood spreading out around me, and—worst of all—I can hear those horrible things laughing all around me. It permeates through the space like the smell of burnt popcorn. The same no matter where you go in the office. Utterly inescapable.

I don’t know how long I’m out, time seems to move more slowly here. It may seem like it’s been days, but I’ll be back in reality in time for the next dose—so it can’t be that long. My face curls to a smile as I feel my heart begin to beat once again, taking in a long deep breath. I open my eyes, roll over onto my back, and just lie there for a bit. Just taking in the beautiful white light all around me. God I love being able to see and hear. And goddamn I love breathing. Some things you just don’t know how much you value until you don’t have them.

I slowly rise and shamble back to my bed, collapsing over the side as I curl into a ball. I know it won’t be for long, but I’ll take any sleep I can get after that fucking hell. Letting out a heavy sigh, I close my eyes and let myself drift off.