Not So Hollo

'I'm burning,' was my first thought as my veins bulged out from straining against my blood soaked shackles. I was strapped to a dreadfully secure operating table under the blaring lights that blocked my vision except for the faint outlines of a few doctors. Another blackout. I seem to be getting a lot of those lately. They said it would get worse without the medicine. Of course, the nurse never said that the medicine would hurt this badly. Sure the doctors said it would pinch, but the pinching sensation had passed and was replaced by fire.

"It wasn't supposed to hurt this bad! Take it out! TAKE IT OUT!!!", I yelled with shut eyes. Tears tracked their way past my cheeks and towards my hair line where they dissipated quickly from the heat that emanated from my body. Pressure built up behind my eyes, threatening to break my skull in two. Then darkness.

This time I woke up in a plain white room. It had no distinguishing features. It only had a faded grey door and a small drain on the floor. I wondered briefly, what was the drain for? Several hours passed with more blackouts. Time seemed to blur. Hours to days and days to weeks. I soon realized that this illness I had contracted had gotten the best of me. The treatments were harsh and made me feel even worse. The doctors would praise of how well I was doing, but their words were empty to my ears.

"You lied! You lied! You LIED!", I screamed loudly while shredding the skin on my wrists and ankles trying to escape. The insanity of my illness ate way at my mind. 'Why don't they help me?', I thought. 'They should be hurt if they can't help me. They'd deserve it, wouldn't they?' I glared at the nurse lady that convinced me to calmly be restrained, but pain changed my heated glare into a pleading gaze. The nurse turned away. I didn't want to suffer any more. I couldn't fight this off any more. 'I'm not going to make it. I'm not going home, am I?'

After an immeasurable amount of time had passed of going in and out of consciousness, I lay there in terrible pain. My blood surging with fire as it spread into the very fiber of my soul. The Fire burned its way into my body like a tsunami of molten metal. Horrible ideas made their way into my head, and I mentally struggled against the bloody thoughts. Where was it coming from? Never before had I thought of doing anything remotely violent to the doctors. After all, they were only trying to help. Weren't they? That's why they took me away. That's why I'm here, strapped to this table.

Thoughts echoed emptily inside my head. 'Escape. Kill. Live. Fight. Go home.' How would I do any of that while strapped onto the table? They said it was contagious. I can't go back. I wanted to so badly. Yes, I wanted to. "I wanna go home", my voice was dry and my words stumbled without grace. I had been given no water since waking up in this room.

Another surge of fire ignited what little sanity I had left. The faces of the doctors morphed and swirled. Their white lab coats becoming demonic wings, stretching and blending in with the plain walls. Only their floating heads moved about the dimension of white. Nausea seized me suddenly. My throat was a burning well. The creature's jaws opened like rusty hinges and spewed sharp noises. Guttural sounds bubbled within my throat as pure panic surged through my head.

"Nooo...make it stop...stop. Make it stop," I struggled still as the Fire boiled my tears away. 'I can't go on. It hurts too much. They're doctors any more. They're only trying to help', I thought. 'Yes, and they're the ones making you hurt. They are bad people. They need to be punished. If you do this then the Fire will go away', a voice, not unlike mine, whispered. My head throbbed from struggling against the voice and the Fire. They told me not to listen to it, but I wanted to go home. I didn't want this pain, this agony.

They had described this voice as the Other. My Other. In between bouts of nausea and consciousness, I had heard the doctors compare results. The results could only mean that there was more than one child here. I wasn't the only one to suffer like this. I was supposedly the only child to have gotten this far into the test without loosing my control completely. All I had wanted since I came here was to get better and if that means to suffer in this much pain then so be it. But at this moment, I didn't want to suffer. I wanted to be pain free, if only for little while. Listening to the voice was my only solution. It had been the only one to endure this pain with me.

My brain was a pulsing mess of swirling colors and numbing pain. My limbs felt too heavy to move. My body was stiff and tense from the spasms. I hurt. I didn't want to hurt. 'O-okay, just make the Fire stop. I don't want to hurt anymore,' I thought. It made sense to hurt bad people who hurt you first. Their medicine wasn't working, so I felt no need to endure this torture any longer. My body was limp. I was only letting out occasional whimpers. My voice had stopped being effective long ago. I could not respond. The doctors poked and prodded as usual, but I could do nothing. Not because the pain stopped but because my body had stopped fighting the Fire. The grotesque hallucinations reverted to their original forms slowly. My breathing became even, calming.

Slowly, too slowly, the fire subsided. I felt only the sore muscles and sweat slick table. The Fire felt good, warming instead of burning. I shifted. My arms moving in slow circular motions. My toes curled and uncurled. Where was the fire? The pain? I was filled with energy. I knew that it was being exerted by my Other, but it had made the pain stop. I was okay with it helping me. I needed its help.

My body stopped burning altogether as a cool calm took over. The manacles that used to grind into my raw ankles and wrists were now caressing them with cool fingers. The Fire was replaced by ice, chilling my blood in the most pleasant way. I almost smiled at the thought that the Fire went on vacation to see the White Mountains, a place in my head that I used to escape. A place that I called home.

The doctors calmly wrote down little notes while poking and prodding me. "Y-you are bad...bad people", my voice croaked almost inaudibly, but the doctors noticed. One even leaned closer. That had been his mistake.

My head was filled with the voice. It was not always clear what the voice said sometimes, but it was transparent when it said, 'Don't you want to go home? You want to see Mama right? Then kill. Bad people don't get to get away with hurting children. They have to be punished...Punished for being bad.' The voice made perfect sense, but even if it didn't my mind was too weak to resist. I had to obey. Right? I wanted to go home so badly, but the fear of the Fire was even greater yet.

I reached out, not with the hands that lay fastened to the table but with the Other's hands. I stared blankly at the doctors that had dared to lean closer to my poor excuse of a body. His eyes widened as he screamed loudly, making my ears ring in the otherwise silent room, but sadly his scream was caught short by his abrupt death. I smiled sickly as his head exploded as if squished by two walls of a compressor. Why did I smile? I had just ended a man's life. Then why did I smile?

I imagine he might have been handsome once, but there was nothing to imagine with only a grotesque pool of white bone chips, curly strands of brain tissue, and blood. His blood coated my body like an unwelcome and ghostly mist. Some must have gotten in my eyes because my vision was starting to go red. The white walls were tinted red and so were the doctors that cowered away from the table they loved to strap me onto.

"Sedate her! Quickly!" One of the doctors shouted after he had come out from his shock. The nurse stared with a pale face, frozen. I smiled at her expression. She deserved to be scared. She deserved it because she lied. Only bad people lie. 'They all deserve punishment. They ALL lied. Didn't they? They're all bad. Aren't they? Yes, they are,' the voice sounded happy to see all the gore. A big man who I assume was used to handling violent outbursts stalked swiftly towards me. He was dressed in a dark suit of leathers that creaked noisily with every step. In his hand he held a syringe with clear liquid in it.

"I'm going home," I said calmly. I wasn't used to being in so much power. I felt muddled and so full of clarity all at once. It was invigorating. I looked down at my restraints. My shredded hands and feet were shackled to the table, while meager leather straps held my chest and hips down. 'Use your imagination', the voice suggested.

I pictured the cuffs coming undone, staring at the metal with intensity. The metal grated as I bent it to release me, and the straps were simply cut. Was I really that strong? I twisted my arms to get up but my body was still too weak. The blood covering my hands was making it too easy to slip on the cool metal surface of the table. I wiped my hands on the standard medical dress, painting a small happy face with its tongue sticking out playfully. All the while the bodyguard had been collecting the syringe. He was the next target. I tried once more and luckily my arms held steady.

The cold made me shiver, bringing miniscule bumps to arise on the exposed flesh of my arms and legs. I wanted badly to rub my arms to gain some warmth, but the voice interrupted. 'Kill him. The guard. He's going to hurt you if you don't hurt him first.' The voice sure was bossy. I felt somehow detached from my body as if I was being moved like a puppet. Well, I have lost some blood. I just need some water. That's all.

'You'll get your water later. Imagine that you have hands. Big hands. Now use them to hurt him. Hurt him badly.'

Mr. Body guard was within my range as I threw my legs lamely over the side of the table. "I'm dizzy", I say to half to myself and half to the fast approaching threat. He was about yard away from me when I lifted his body up by his hair and watched without sympathy as he struggled and grunted. I repeated a thought I had had before, was I really that strong? I didn't even have to touch him to make him hurt. Why did I want to kill him though? 'HE'S BAD! EVIL! DANGEROUS! Kill him. Just kill him!", the voice commanded me. I flinched inside from the outburst and tried to drop the body, but he didn't fall. Why wasn't I letting go? 'What are you doing? Let him go! He doesn't have to die!' I screamed at the voice in my mind but I could do nothing about the man. It was too late. The voice was in control. My eyes darted across the room. I was no longer in control of my body. I was only an observer to my Other.

He shook violently up and down like a rattle. His forehead was red, but his hair line was even more red as thick blood trickled down. The white of his skull shone clearly in the bright lights. Somehow the remaining two doctors and the nurse had scurried off into a corner where they acquired a tranquilizing gun. 'If you can't kill them then I'll kill them', the voice whispered sweetly, as if promising a treat after doing a simple task. It sounded so simple.

His body shook once more as his body fell to the floor with an echoing thump. I was left staring at his curly mop of brown hair with the scalp still attached. It was discarded. The hair-meat duo slid down the wall in a crooked line. The urge to paint these painfully white walls red resonated inside my head. 'Time for them to learn a lesson', the voice said a gleefully. The last thing I thought before the darkness came for me again was: 'I don't want this. I don't want to be like this anymore'. I would have preferred the medicine.
...........................................................

Looking towards the 'brave' trio in the corner, the girl stood. She took a few shaky steps before letting go of the table and smiled. If she had not been in this particular situation you would have thought that someone had given her a puppy, or that she had yet to open the largest Christmas present under the tree. Still smiling, the girl in the blood covered medical dress stared directly at the nurse who had begun to cry shamefully.

"We're going home. But first I think someone needs to learn a lesson. You can't be naughty and get away with it now can you?"