The goggles came next. I was forced back up into a sitting position so they could be locked into place, and the world went as dark as my emotions in that moment. They weren’t goggles. They were a blindfold.
Fitting. I was about to be executed.
I’d like to think it was Beouf who picked me up and started to slide me down into that horrendous contraption. A final gentle mercy. The burning slap on my bottom as I tried to spread myself out and wedge myself from being shoved down makes me think it wasn’t.
The inside was slick. I must’ve looked like some kind of slug sliding down a windshield as my head was pushed down. Going under for the final time. Drowning. Dying.
“Wait! Wait! Wait!” I heard Beouf call out. “Clark! Stick out your left hand!”
Whether or not I would have complied became moot. A hand plunged down and yanked it out for me. “Almost forgot the ring!”
“Oh good catch!” I heard the nurse say, “That could have been dangerous!”
My wedding ring. My symbol of commitment and devotion to my wife: Cassie. My partner. My equal opposite who balanced my ideals with her pragmatism. The only woman I had ever loved…
With a quick twist, that symbol was taken from me, my hand shoved back down into the pit of despair with the rest of me, and the lid was closed.
“Give me back my ring!” I cried out! As big as the contraption was compared to me, I could still barely stand in the innermost layer. I was practically forced into the fetal position. I jutted the flats of my palms upward, trying. “Give me back my ring! Please!”
The lid wouldn’t budge. I was trapped. I didn’t care. “GIVE ME BACK MY RING!” I heard no reply, just the low buzzing of coils heating up. With the goggled blindfold on, it was dark and warm in this place, and getting warmer by the second. “GIVE ME BACK MY RING!”
I needed that ring! I needed it. It was my connection to Cassie and so much more.
The Little girl at the barbecue joint. The one screaming as she was being taken to the restroom to get her diaper changed. The one who’d been a wife and mother and screamed so. She hadn’t had a wedding ring either.
Even through the black out tint of the goggles, I saw the light surrounding me; Felt the heat starting to envelop me. Inside the tube, the light was bright. Bright light. Like the light at the end of the tunnel.
The light of death.
“GIVE! ME! BACK! MY!”
I woke up in a cold sweat, practically rolling out of bed, screaming my lungs out. “GIVE ME BACK MY RING! GIVE ME BACK MY RING!”
Cassie was on her feet and running around the bed to meet me not three seconds later. We were both naked in the dark. She held me while I came down from my panic attack; while the world of that all too real nightmare faded back into my subconscious.
“It’s okay,” she told me. “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. Whatever it is, it’s just a dream.”
I didn’t dare speak above a whisper now that I was fully awake. “I know,” I told her. “I know.” I wouldn’t be going back to sleep that night. That was something else I knew.
Walking over to the computer, I logged onto the school’s website and started filling out forms for time off and requesting a substitute.
“What are you doing?” Cassie called over to me.
“Calling out sick,” I said. “Taking some time off.”
“It’s only the first week of school,” Cassie said.
“Don’t care,” I hissed back, my voice barely audible over the hum of the computer. “I need it.”
Cassie and I teased. Cassie and I fought. But when we could tell that one of us was at our wits end, we backed off each other. “How much time?”
“About a month,” I said. “That’s how much time off I have stored up anyways.”
“Why that long? What are you going to do?”
I didn’t answer her until I’d finished clicking all the right links and making sure no one from school was going to come looking for me. “First?” I said. “We’re going to get out of Oakshire. I’m quitting my job. This will make them think that I’m not and get me a couple more paychecks.”
“What then?” That’s what I loved most about Cassie. She wasn’t talking me out of this. She just wanted to know what I was thinking.
“I think I’ll become a writer,” I told her. “Write on the go. Publish online.”
“Oooooh,” Cassie said. “An artist and writer, team? I like. Maybe I could do illustrations.”
I smiled at her and gave her a kiss right on the lips. “Maybe. But first I’ve got to write a novel. Memoirs. Non-fiction.”
(The End)
If only that had been the end. If only I had listened to Cassie; listened to my common sense. Seen the signs for what they were.
That wasn’t the end.
No.
That was just a fleeting last minute fantasy that my brain concocted right as every skin cell in my body was lit on fire.
My face, armpits, genitals, chest, all of it. Everything hurt. Everything. But the physical pain felt directly proportional to how much hair got zapped away down to the root.
Pain.
So much pain.
The kind that makes you beg for death. The kind that stretches out and just as you think you’re developing something of a tolerance for, either it waxes or you wane. I don’t think I screamed. But not for lack of trying. A proper scream would have required the strength to draw air into my lungs. Any sweat or tears that may have resulted from the heat and the stress would have evaporated instantly. If I had had an open cut it would have been cauterized on the spot.
It was as if every follicle, every cell in my skin was being stabbed to death by a thousand needles made of light. It wasn’t a quick death, either.
I lost consciousness. That’s when I had that last fleeting glimpse of a future that might have been had I not been so stupid.
I woke up on the floor. Tired. So tired. I was still naked. Beouf had moved the changing mat over to the floor. I couldn’t move. Everything hurt. So tired. So tired.
She was rubbing ointment on my skin. My flesh looked raw; close to bleeding. I couldn’t feel it, but it looked ghastly. Almost like the model of a person where the muscles remain, but the epidermis has been peeled back. The goggles had been taken off me and I could feel the air conditioner blowing in my hair.
Good. At least I still had hair somewhere.
“Shhhhh,” my old mentor hushed and cooed at me while she coated my tummy. “The nanites in this lotion will help your skin feel better.” It was true. The balm had a cooling effect. It was like slipping into a nice cold tub of goo after a really nasty sunburn at the beach.
I tried to open my mouth, but my throat was too dry to speak. She lathered it on my face. My nose. My ears.
“You’ve been through a lot.” She kept going. My legs. My toes. The soles of my feet. “Mrs. B. is gonna take care of you, though. You can rest.” My pubic area. My penis. My testicles. My taint. “Go to sleep, baby. You’re safe.” The backs of my legs. My butt. My asshole. “We’ll talk after you wake up.”
Before I closed my eyes, the last thing I saw was Beouf unfolding a fresh diaper. The last thing I felt was my rump hitting the soft padding.