“Easy, he wants to stomp my head. Can I sit up? The floor is cramping my style.”
“Stand,” he said, giving me his hand and pulling me to my feet. That was all it took. Frank. His name was Frank. Seems he didn’t know much more than the other two. I guess they were on a need to know basis.
“Can we cut off his head next?” asked Donald.
Christ, he was serious!
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” I said. “It might limit how much information you can get out of me.”
Donald looked at me stupidly.
“I’d be dead, Donald.” Well, maybe not, but I didn’t really want to find out…
“Well, if we can’t do that, then at least do that injection thingy…” Donald suggested.
“Thingy?” I laughed, staring at Frank. “Thingy? The Community really scraped the bottom of the barrel to find this blind follower.
Frank laughed along with me. Then he pulled the syringe from his white lab coat as dumb and dumber stepped up on either side of me.
I stopped laughing just before Donald hit me in the face again. He was getting too good at that. Big and dumb can come in handy.
I wasn’t in a hurry to find out what was in the syringe. I was reading from them it wasn’t the serum, although it was a clear fluid, like the serum. Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee seemed to believe it was lethal. I couldn’t read any indication from my good friend Frank. I still had a nasty headache from whatever they knocked me out at the house. I didn’t look forward to being their guinea pig one more time.
“We’ve noticed that toxins given intravenously are difficult, if not impossible, for many immortals to reverse,” Frank said. “You revived from the sedative quickly. You should have been out a good day not a couple hours. We wanted to see what this would do…”
I figured, why make it easy for them? I started struggling against Alfred and Donald, elbowing Alfred hard in the nose. The crunch was satisfying even after Donald twisted my arm, wrenching me to the floor on my knees.
“What is it?” I asked. “Drano?”
“No,” Frank answered. “Strychnine.”
“Are you crazy?” Talking to these three wasn’t working. I looked right into the fucking video camera. “What if it kills me?” I asked it. “That’s a bit counterproductive, don’t you think?”
Frank came closer, jabbing it in my arm. That stung.
“Missed lab the day your instructor went over injections, right Frank?”
“I’m not a fucking nurse… I’m a doctor.” He tossed the syringe in the waste basket. A long shot and right in. Not bad. I took another close look at him. He didn’t know shit about why they were doing this. Neither did his buddies.
“What about that Hippocratic oath?” I asked.
Frank planted his foot in the middle of my back and shoved me face first into the floor.
“Well, your bedside manner sucks big, Frank.”
I tried pushing myself up with my arms and his foot came down in the middle of my back– my chin bit the floor.
“Floor’s good,” I mumbled. “I’ll stay on the floor…”
He stepped back next to the other two, leaning against the stainless steel cart and watched. I recalled the effects of strychnine poisoning, remembering that it was pretty painful. Something about muscle spasms so severe you suffocate. Not that I could suffocate. Even if I didn’t die, it would hurt like a bitch. I started getting anxious, recalling that was the first sign. Actually, I was already anxious. More like twitchy. Not good.
As my stomach began to bunch up, I thought aloud, “This is bull shit.” I expected the Community to do the same thing as they did the last time– drain my blood, analyze it, run some kind of mad scientist experiment. I just didn’t see the logic in trying to kill me.
“Why?” I asked, looking into the fucking camera. Whoever was watching knew exactly what they were doing.
I reached to figure out the purpose only to have it slam me in the face. “If I could just get out of here…” I mumbled under my breath. That’s what they wanted! Jump. Leave. Change. I almost laughed. Almost. Joke was on them, I couldn’t depart this universe. Not without Sid or the sand. Especially not in front of them. Unfortunately, the joke was on me too.
I knew nervous agitation was another symptom– but I had that long before Frank gave me that injection. How long had it been? My muscles in my arms and legs were tightening. That and I was sweating buckets. Odd… I didn’t remember profuse sweating being part of the symptoms. The fact that I was coherent didn’t make sense either. Actually, the floor was starting to feel nice– so cool, so smooth against my cheek. Thick wax, high gloss, I ran my hand across it. Fuck, the floor was getting me aroused. I could smell their sweat in the room, and I had a familiar taste in the back of my mouth.
Lights sparked in my brain. The smell of my own blood and Mica from my pores. This wasn’t strychnine poisoning.
Fool the fools to fool me. Nice trick.
Then Peter Deal walked in.
I didn’t know if I should feel relief or apprehension. I couldn’t help but feel hope. Peter got me out of this place once before.
By now my heart was pounding and blood was rushing to my groin. Thank you God I’m on my stomach.
Peter kneeled down my head and whispered in my ear, “I guess by now you know what we gave you…”
“Yeah, I do.”
“It was my idea to give you serum instead– make you think it was strychnine. I didn’t think it would work, and you’re far too handsome to die.”
“Fuck you Peter.”
“Well now, since we’ve never been formally introduced, you either read my mind or you’ve known me before… which is it?” he whispered.
“You’re so smart– you guess.”
“How well did you know me?” he said licking my ear. That was bad. I started scooting away from temptation. “Not that well? Maybe we could get acquainted?” He pushed me over onto my back. “Is that growing exponentially or are you just happy to see me?”
“Get away.”
“What? You don’t want me to talk nerdy to you?”
I couldn’t focus my eyes.
“You don’t sound so sure…” he said, I strained my head to look into his face. It looked jumbled, like some cubist Picasso painting.
“I’m sure. Fuck, what else was in that?”
“Well an interesting concoction– we added etorphine– used to knock out elephants, you should have been out by now. Amazing…”
——————–
I woke up. Life was fuzzy but I could see Sid clearly enough, sitting next to me, legs crossed. Back in the same white room. I wondered why anyone would want an all white room. What the hell was John Lennon thinking? Too bright. It felt like my brain was trying to push its way out of my skull while my cock was trying to push its way out of my pants.
Being injected with that shit is like being in heat. And Sid was right next to me just realizing I was conscious.
“I was worried. You’ve been out for so long,” he said, leaning toward me.
“Not as long as you think.”
“What?”
“I woke before you and had the pleasure of meeting some of our gracious hosts.”
I know he was just rubbing my back innocently, but it felt like the most erotic back rub I ever had.
“We gotta get out of here,” he said, fingers moving up under my shirt. I turned over. It was easy to pull him down on top of me. I had my tongue down his throat before he knew what hit him.