Arroba: The Awakening - Chapter Sixteen.
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Day Twenty Six
When I awake this time I am no longer bound but strapped flat to something instead. I would like to say I'm on a bed but whatever is beneath me is far too hard to be anything that pleasing. I can feel three straps on my body; one large one across my chest, and one at each ankle. I still can't see or talk so my situation has not improved much.
If only they had left me another twenty minutes I would have done quite a good job at killing myself but now they will preserve my very mortal life - they have learnt the lesson whilst dealing with such a fragile person and will not let it happen again, otherwise how will my torture continue? That would mean peace - a peace they do not want me to have!
Damn them all to the deepest, darkest, most terrifying depths of hell!
I move my head to the side and try to hear something, anything to indicate where I am. The sound of running water and Hystri has been replaced with a strange electrical hissing noise and a low rhythmic beeping; there are no other sounds. And when someone whispers into my ear I jump so much my still thick, slow heart misses a beat and for a second I think it's going to stop.
"Dione, you must remain calm. I am a friend, well more a neutral companion actually but still no harm will come of you from my hands. You did quite a grand job upon your wrists, did you realize what you were doing? Surely you did not?"
His voice is like velvet and quite a sensual relief to the other more immediate, strangely cutting sounds that linger through the room.
"I know you cannot speak and trust me I am sorry for that but there is nothing I can do. I will continue to give you a blood transfusion but once that is done you will go back to sixth Brethenth."
I thrash around against my restraints and frantically shake my head at him.
He can't let me go back there! I want to die not go back to that hell! Goddess help me!
"Shh. Try to relax, Dione. I know it must be hard after everything you have been through but you will have to go back again, unfortunately. I can't change that."
I thrash around again and silently scream as the doctor attentively tries to reassure me by patting my shoulder. My struggling continues until eventually I feel a slight sting in my arm and then suddenly all of my anxiety and fear washes away on a wave of warmth. Warmth so heavy it seems to numb my mind.
I smile up dizzily to the doc and he says, "I'm glad that is better."
Woah, who knew drugs could be so much fun I think to myself. Maybe he could rig up an I.V of this stuff for when I have to go back to that hell hole, then I would have oblivion without the inconvenience of the 'whole death thing' - now that's an idea!
My body rocks with silent laughter and I'm sure right in that moment I look like a total lunatic, but who cares. I need this rest, this calm more than he or anyone else could ever know so I'm going to savour every last single second of it, and if that means letting the high take me over, then so be it.
"I am going to give you some morphine now to stop any..."
I frantically shake my head at him. I want oblivion, yes but there is a major difference between that and being unconscious and utterly unaware of what's happening to me and then to wake and find new horrors have surfaced into my reality. That's the scariest thing I can think of right now.
"You do not want the morphine?"
I nod my head this time.
"Are you not in any pain?"
I shake my head and he tuts dramatically.
"You should be in an awful lot of pain by now; like I said, you have done a grand job of cutting your wrists but perhaps the Valium has taken the edge off for you. It is wonderful stuff when used in the correct manner."
I shake my head again and I feel him pat my shoulder lightly as a lonely tear slides from my left eye.
"To my own sincere regret, I cannot tell you and be truthful that everything will be alright because I fear it may not be but for now, I am looking after you so enjoy that, no harm will come to you whilst you're in my hospital clinic."
I nod lightly and he says, "Good, good."
If I was able to speak I would have told him he seemed like a good man and then I would have asked why the hell he served the Sovereign by repairing all of the fallen warriors and tortured victims of their whims; how could he condone that? I would have been very interested in his answer because if I were him, I wouldn't have had a good enough excuse in order to cleanse my own guilt.
I hear him walk away from me and once again I'm left to the eerie beep and buss of what I now know is hospital equipment. At some point I doze for a while, having very strange and confusing dreams of hungry Hystri and even hungrier men coming to me in my prison of a sightless, voiceless darkness and those dreams soon wake me when all I wish for, is oblivion. The mind is cruel like that; you can sleep happily for months and then something will happened to upset your careful balance of positive and negative and when you think you can sleep to forget all of your troubles your mind won't let you. Instead it filters through all of the crap and rides it to the fore front of your mind at the very moment you need to sleep and feel, see nothing. It's like a double torture; conscious and unconscious.
The velvet voiced man of before presses a cold glass to my lips and I drink like I haven't tasted water in months, choking a few times in the process. When the cup is drained he replaces it with another and I drink that too.
"It is 10am, would you like some breakfast?"
I am a prisoner of these people own invention; how can I possibly eat?
I shake my head at him and then turn it in the opposite direction of his voice, telling him without words that I no longer want him to talk to me. Okay, he isn't going to torture me like the rest would but he's still as bad as them, he still won't free me and in my book that puts him into the same category. After all, the Sovereign very rarely needs to do the dirty deeds themselves, they have minions for that but that does not mean they are not the instigators. Of course they're still responsible.
The word instigator echo's through my mind and I relieve a moment in my head that now seems like a life time ago; the moment Ali opened up to me for the first time and read his poems to me, the first night I had stayed at his house. And then that brings on the memories of all of those uncertain yet wonderful days, now lost to my memories but yet so re-livable within my walled darkness. I want those days back, I want the security and promise of a life with him, my only love. I do not want this complicated one that has fallen upon me without request, I don't want it for Ali either.
If we could have run away that day he showed me that little red book of revelations I would have. So what if we would have had to live like fugitives, anything would have been better than this. No matter how I try to rosy things up there is always that hard truth in the back of my mind - I am going to die here despite Ignea's best efforts, in a Realm I don't consider my home, in the company of the most evil people I have ever met and away from the one person that means more to me than my own life and whom I don't even know is still alive or not! Right in this moment I believe things cannot get any worse but then I should know by now that fate can be an unpredictably cruel thing.
I hear the doctor's footsteps, which now feel very familiar to me after spending what must be hours here. He stops by the bed and begins to fiddle with my arm.
"Dione, your blood transfusion is finished so I will give you one more check over."
There is many things left unsaid, 'then you have to go', 'they will come to take you', 'you must go back to the sixth Brethenth to wait out your prison sentence.' Any of those would have currently been the worst thing to say to me. I try to keep myself calm, breathing evenly in through my nose and out through my mouth but the electric beeping of earlier starts to increase regardless of my efforts.
"I am so desperately torn. I see you... I see this delicate, beautiful woman laid out on my gurney, bruised and broken. I have no understanding to why you are here or why they want you or what has been done to you but of course, I can guess considering the amount of injuries you came in with. I have had a healer heal your wasted muscles and most of your sores, scrapes and bruises but you are still in a very bad way. Of course I must obey my Sovereign but a big part of me wants to pat you on the shoulder and tell you I am your rescuer, that we will flee yet I cannot and it is disturbing me to say the least."
He's disturbed! Try laying here for a while with the knowledge you're going back to your own personal version of hell soon, matey!
I clench and unclench my hands next to me and the doctor must notice my agitation because he next says, "I did not mean to upset you. I just wish you to understand how rare a thing this is for me - for me to feel empathy for my patient. I am supposed to remain neutral and have for centuries so it all gets quite easy after a while but then you are brought into my own little world and now suddenly I can't think of anything other than letting you go free. I know you cannot cast because of your bonds but I feel bewitched by thee and I haven't even heard your voice. What becomes of this?"
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