Wednesday, August 5, 2009

08/05 | 11:04 PM | ASLEEP3

I couldn't sleep after talking with... 'Anna'.

But how can I refer to her as that? She's not the Anna I knew. Or thought I knew. And here, I'm left wondering if the Anna I knew was ever even real. Or just some fucked up figment of my damn imagination.


Anna Santiago, as her name tag reads, is a junior nurse at St. Rudnick Hospital. She came back in at dawn to draw some of my blood into a tiny little vial. I tried to question her further, to draw some shred of evidence that she was the same Anna I knew, but she just smiled serenely and wouldn't answer any of my questions.


I think someone outside, beyond this little room, berated her for speaking to me so freely. So openly. And why the fuck not. I'm infected apparently.


Anna too, was careful when she drew blood from me. Latex gloves and every time I fidgeted, she jumped a bit. Which I'm pretty sure made her dangerous with a needle. But we got through it, and she retreated out of the room.


...

I'm still bound down with a strange series of gray bindings and wraps. They press my body to the bed. I was going to ask about getting these fucking things off at first. I thought that would be pretty do-able. I mean, it's not like I'm a raving infected Freak.


And then, when Anna exited my room at dawn, I caught sight of someone standing outside the room, just beyond the door. A certain person dressed in military camouflage and toting a large shiny metallic submachine gun.


And then there's the fact that there's a rather large glass covering the wall opposite my bed. Extremely shiny. But also extremely obvious.

I've seen them before in a scared straight program where I was led into a police interrogation room as a kid shoplifter: a two-way mirror. I didn't need to turn off the lights and hold a flashlight to it to be sure. I'm positive.


I'm a prisoner. I'm infected.


The doctor Anna mentioned came in around midday.


He was an elderly fellow. Graying hair, kinda short, a happy little grin captured on his sharp features. But his smile didn't reach his eyes which were unnaturally focused. Watching every detail.

Yes... I knew this man's name too, even before he introduced himself as Dr. Henry Kiper Lucas II.


Son of a bitch.


With a smile, he urged me to call him by his first name, Henry.


I sort of wanted to cry then. Maybe he noticed that, because he backed up a few steps (BECAUSE I'M A DANGEROUS CREATURE RIGHT??? CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL WITH ME) and asked me what was wrong.


I couldn't answer. Jesus Christ, how can you answer that?

How can you explain to this phony little loon that you'd known him before. That you'd both been survivors of the end of the world? That you'd both been captured by slavers, escaped, and joined together as companions? That you'd lived together in the empty remains of a once bustling city. That you'd faced the danger of mutated creatures together every single night?


Simple: you didn't.


And I wanted to cry.

The doctor, Henry, explained to me that roughly a month ago, a few days before the time I started to relay my days in this manner - I was infected by a new and dangerous disease: CJD2S4 - a variation of Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease.


The good doctor sat in a little chair beside my bed, and with a painful expression of mourning on his face (FAKE. FAKE EXPRESSION - IT DIDN'T TOUCH HIS EYES), he informed me that I had fallen victim to this new disease, and gone into a horribly violent psychosis.


In my dementia, I'd murdered my family. Locked myself in my own home for a week. Escaped wildly, attacked random people, entered a school near my home, attacked many of the students before locking myself within the school's halls, and finally setting the school's central building on fire.


I was captured then, and was brought to the hospital. To be treated for my disease. I had been treated with a new compound, the good doctor explained slowly (Because he thinks I'm stupid - he thinks the disease rotted parts of my BRAIN) and, so far, the new formula was demonstrating incredible success.


The compound that was now being constantly administered through my IV had brought me out of my psychosis, away from the End-of-the-world post-apocalypse I'd imagined.

Henry promised me that, though this formula was not the cure, this was certainly the correct course. From here, the cure would be attainable. He explained, that at this point I was immensely important. Hundreds around the glove could already be infected with this disease, as it spread rapidly through fluid-to-fluid contact.


And he got up, leaving me behind in my silent stupor.


I couldn't talk then. Everything was coming to fast. Freaky - as I'd 'imagined' it, had never existed. Everything that I thought had happened in the last month had never been? And the others... Anna, Henry, Hector, and Sean... were they just shadows of reality my mind reflected into my false world?


What the fuck?


I'd killed my family? I was the infected? I...


I...


I.

4 comments:

  1. Fuck you, you're just tired from carrying the story further. ):

    ReplyDelete
  2. Who says this hospital "reality" isn't the psychosis induced dementia resulting from being shot six times? You should wait until they finish the story before you tell them to fuck off for entertaining us for the past month.

    Fuck you, Anon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous said...
    Who says this hospital "reality" isn't the psychosis induced dementia resulting from being shot six times? You should wait until they finish the story before you tell them to fuck off for entertaining us for the past month.

    Fuck you, Anon.


    You make a good point anon.

    We can only hope, i really like this story :3

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think its wierd how it goes from the journal kind of story to the 1st person kind of story...
    not really noticable though

    ReplyDelete