Last week I tied someone down against their will, stabbed them with a very large needle, and slammed acid into their veins.
I poisoned them, paralyzing their entire body, and watched as a masked and hooded figure shoved a plastic tube down their throat.
We let a machine take over their body. pushing and sucking their chest like a whoopie cushion without the laughs.
Electric pads were fixed to the bare skin, wires trailing to a powerful battery on a nearby metal cart. A strong shock arched the body's back, arms and legs flailing.
The jugular was next under the knife, blood dripping off the bed, needle and thread dancing through skin.
I slid tubes up their urethra and anus.
The room was filled with the foul stench of human excrement, rotting flesh, burning skin and fat, and acrid chemicals.
The hooded figure sloshed blood in a trail from the room, too oblivious to observe the gaping mouth of the victim's spouse at the door.
...add a clown carrying an ax, and you could charge admission.
Sickness contains enough horror to fuel the muse of King's successor. A prolonged death even more. Take me to the place that doesn't add to it.
I couldn't say what is worse - the loss of control, the loss of an intact future, the symptoms and pain of the sickness, or the side effects and pain of the treatment and environment.
Whatever Lazarus-surrogate walks off my unit next, I can never be sure which action was more important: the needle and acid, or the gentle re-orienting that staved off one more possible root of PTSD.
