Galerians Fan Fiction ❯ Phoenix ❯ Ash ( Chapter 1 )

I guess you should call me Ash. That's as close to right as any name. I don't know my real one. I don't know if I have a real one. When you don't have any knowledge as to what you should be called, you will answer to what you are called most frequently. Am I right? That's what they call me. Ash. So, you should too.

I don't even know who they are. I have never seen them. To be honest I haven't seen much lately. I don't know if I'm blind or if I've been asleep so long in this bed, I've forgotten how to open my eyes. I know they're there because I can hear them. Walking back and forth scribbling on notepads or clipboards or something. Something hard with stuff on it that rustles and tears, anyway. They talk constantly. It all sounds like medical gibberish to me. Psiemmitters… neuropeptides… psycho-enhancing compounds…ECGs (I know that one)…Botulinum. They speak in whispers- they probably haven't figured out I'm awake yet- and a lot of the words they say I probably would recognize if my head wasn't so fucked up.

I'm lying still on this hard impossibly flat bed…in fact I think I'm shackled to it. Can't move my arms or legs. But I feel like I'm spinning. Like I'm in a goddamn gyroscope. I feel like I'm twisting in four directions at once. But that's not possible. So, it must be in my head. What I do recognize out of all the jargon that they whisper around my twisting, fucked up, but not-still-sleeping head is that name. What I assume is my name. Ash.

I feel them more than anything else. I feel them moving my fingers, rotating my arms, and checking my pulse (so much for the ECG). I feel them sticking needles into me, pumping me full of cold yet burning liquids, clamping clamps, adjusting the keel and pitch and yaw of this thing I can't describe as anything but an impossibly flat bed. But I can deal with needles, I could give a rat's ass which way they tilt and twirl me, I can even tolerate the clamps (what ever the hell they're for.) What I can't stand -what makes me want to scream in fact- are the stops they pull. Actually, it's more of a twist-and-yank sort of feeling. Like someone took a hold of a big pinch of your skin and twisted it a few times before ripping it off. And then the sensation of deflation. Yes, deflation. It feels like I'm a human shaped inner tube and they pull out my plug and all the air comes rushing out of me. But it's slow… more like a fast leak. It could be liquid too. They may be letting out some of the excess stuff they pumped me with. I feel like I'm shrinking, flattening, becoming a skin sheet for this horrific bed.

They don't leave me lying there like a used condom for long, though. They hook me up to some more clamps and seem to re-pump me. I think it is air, in and out. It makes that whooshing sound like a helium tank inflating a balloon. It's cold going in and hot coming out. It makes sense I guess, but damn is it weird when it happens to you.

There are a lot of different voices. Some male some female. But one stands out. IT sounds deep and German. He pronounces V's like W's and vice versa. He's probably the head doctor… or scientist (they could be scientists too I guess). It's too cliché for him not to be, you know? Besides, I hear him walking around the room we're in. I think it's pretty big, because of the echoes his hard soled shoes make. He seems to walk slower than everyone else, who sound like their rushing around like roaches when his voice is there. He strolls around the probably-big room we're in and barks orders to the others in the room.

"Get the wasodiolators! Schell! I vant to administer some Soren on Ash und I do not need any aneurisms. The last thing we need is for this boy to die on us. Ve cannot lose another. He is wery important for mein research. Vhere ist that Soren? Someone get ze Soren. Schell!"

"Yes, Dr. Eirlander."

Oh great. Here we go again.

Soren is better that some of the stuff this guy has me shot up with. It goes in easy. The needle feels fucking huge, but the juice is painless. A sort of numbing sensation. It gives me one hell of a headache though. It feels like my brain is being compressed by some force that threatens to crack my skull to escape its confines. Like a wild animal beating the inside of my head trying to get out. Would you believe that's better than some of the other stuff? It is.

I can distinguish three distinct chemicals but only two names. I should say I can feel three distinct chemicals. The names I know I can connect to the chemicals. There is Soren of course; and then there's Corsin. Corsin is the worst going in. I think they have to heat it up to make it work.

"To wivify the ions und further the effect of ze compound."

That's what the head doctor said. I can feel the boiling liquid coursing through my veins for a very long time after they inject it. I think until it equalizes with my body temperature after awhile. I overheard one of the lackey doctors saying that they have to bubble nitric oxide through it

"To prevent a pulmonary embolism."

Sometimes, after they inject the Corsin my whole body starts to tingle that pins-and-needles feeling you get when you sleep on your hand or cross your legs for too long. And I feel like I can see again. My eyes stay closed, but there is a hazy, blue-shifted image plastered on my mind. It moves in a sort of stop-time like a strobe light or one of those old-school movies that have no voices only music and text screens. It may just be an illusion brought about by the weird effects of the Corsin, but the images seem to correspond with the sounds around me. But they're kind of off. Out of sync. There's a second or two of delay between what I hear and what I 'see'.

The third chemical, the one I can't name, was only injected into me once… I think. My memory of the experience is very choppy and off color. Like those scrambled channels at the high end of the TV channels. The ones that are typically pay-per-view movies or porn.

I think they put in me by mistake. Because it really fucked me up (it felt like tiny, metal ball-bearings coursing through my body) and the German doctor got really pissed and started screaming things in German and then getting more pissed off when he had to repeat himself in English because no one understood him. The weird thing about it, though, was that I could understand him perfectly even before his translated himself. I don't know German. At least I don't think I do. I haven't been able to get any of his occasional slip-ups since the incident.

Besides my strange multilingual-ness, the chemical, I'm just going to call it X for now, did some weird shit to me. I felt coldness all over my body and tightness in my head like my brain was tying itself into a knot. But the knot kept tying and untying over and over again. Every time it tied, I felt a similar strain on one of my arms like I was lifting something really heavy. Every time it untied I felt that strain relax and I heard a crash, and once a fleshy thump and snap, like something hitting a wall or the ground.

There was a lot of screaming and Dr. Eirlander continued barking orders. But now his voice had a note of amusement in it. Like he was happy with what he saw. It might just have been my beshited mind playing tricks on me again but…could anyone be that sadistic? Could anyone be so selfish that even when disaster strikes they can chuckle happily because part of it went their way? Because of some unexpected, yet pleasantly double-edged outcome?