He smiles at me, laughs really, with his faded, yellowing teeth that look the exact color of the tile mold found behind a public toilet. His name is Hank, but his buttery complexion and lumpy t-shirt suggest that he could have once been a “Meredith” or a “Suzanne.” One gnarled, oil-stained finger points toward a tilt-a-whirl about two hundred yards away from the auto shop where Hank has towed my broken down car. I shake my head no, explaining wordlessly with my widening eyes and shaking hands what my voice cannot. I have the most awful, splitting migraine that threatens to tear my skull in two. I imagine it to feel akin to an ice pick being shoved repeatedly into the corner of my eyebrow by a strong man in a circus. Hank twists my arm and drags my fragile, nauseated body to the tilted, raised surface. I lie still, grateful for the chance to close my eyes and attempt to allow the stabbing and ripping in my head to subside, but it is sharply brought back into focus with a horrible metal clinking sound. My captor emerges from behind the control booth, holding two stained cloth straps with metal hooks at both ends. I try to scream, but only a low, inaudible moan escapes my lips. Hank attaches each of the metal clips to the rails on either side of me. With a terrible scraping sound, he stands back, reveling in the monomaniacal control of his most recent prey. He turns his back to me, and for a moment, I almost desire to call out for him to stop, to come back, to stay beside me. I am frightened, but I am more frightened of what he will return with if he leaves.
A loud clicking noise occurs somewhere near my left ear, and the surface of the sun in the form of carnival lights is in my face, shrinking and widening my pupils to absorb every color, to take in every ray, and to torment my aching consciousness. The machine has begun to move. I feel far more nauseated and purely petrified than I ever have in my entire life. In one swift cat-like motion, Hank lands a few inches away from my left arm, his boots resounding against the metal. There is something in his right hand, and he hides it behind his grime-stained t-shirt. With his left hand, he makes a fist around the crook of my elbow, feeling for a vein with his blackened fingernail. Every part of my body is on fire with pain and nerves. I contort my muscles away from his overbearing body, silently praying that I may snap the ropes that bind me before I sever bone from bone.
Calmly, and with nurse-like steadiness, Hank lowers the needle to my pulsing vein. I writhe to get away from his stinking flesh, his venomous stare. I cry and shake, and I can no longer breathe evenly, but he ignores my struggles. The needle pierces my skin, its tiny ribbed tip digging into me like a miniature bayonet. I look up at my keeper, terrified, but he only smiles that strange, laughing, yellowing smile. It is the last image I see before I am gone.
I wake up with a start, a shrill beeping resounding somewhere near my left ear. In symmetry, my left eye opens, then my right. My hands fly to my stomach, and I sit up, wriggling my torso this way and that to ascertain that I do not feel the need to throw up.
"Hi," Cassy says timidly. "How are you feeling?" She offers me Swedish pancakes and hands me my bra from where it has been displayed across the chair in the corner. I blink once, twice. Noticing the eleven half-eaten cups of red jello, I conclude that I must be in the hospital.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
