A calendar hangs next to the mirror, partially torn, with the year, 1942, at the top. The days have all been crossed out, so the actual date is a mystery. The calendar could be years off for all she knows.
An advertisement for, Lady Guinevere Cigarettes, fills the page, just above the days of the week. It’s a low-rate illustration, drawn by an, underpaid, amateur artist who was most likely overworked enough to commit suicide in lonely alleyway.
The ad displays a knight in shining armor, and a lady; perhaps the Lady Guinevere herself, graces the stage, thereof. The two embrace one another, passionately, arms and legs entangled in feigned passion.
They slobber on one another like wanton animals. Perhaps they both secretly yearn, not for each other but, for another drag. The copy claims that Lady Guinevere Cigarettes are made from only supreme tobacco… a cigarette so smooth you will never love another.
Becoming slowly aware, a presence creeps across the borders of her mixed-up reality. Yes, there’s a man in the room, he’s standing beside her. He’s the source of the smell of rum and tobacco. He’s been the one talking to her all along.
His long white coat is splotched with body fluids. The collar is fraying along its edge. The irregular patterns make brown puddles which are outlined with darker brown-red borders. Maybe an assassin used the white coat as a canvas, on which he finger-painted a terrible confession.
She struggles to think clearly. The brain-fog is clearing. She asks a question of her own, her voice sounds distant and strange to her, it’s muffled in her ears. “What… is it… I’m supposed to remem...?” Her voice drags to a halt. She can only complete the question in her head. Her tongue is swollen and feels like a piece of dry leather in her mouth, sticking to the inside of her gummy cheeks.
Her eyes are sensitive to the sterile white beam shining rudely into her face, insulting her, invading private little spaces she hasn’t even explored yet. All the mushy jelly stuff at the hot, screaming core of her eyeballs wants to burst out, with each painful throb of her brain.
Rivulets of tears squeeze out and careen down onto her small, sallow cheeks. She finds her voice again and slurs, sounding increasingly more impaired than before, “Did you… did you bring me here?” Her head wobbles and nausea crescendos. She’s uncertain if this man is responsible, for her being in this place, in this room, awaiting an unknown fate.
He ignores her question. “No, perhaps you don’t remember. They tell me that was quite a blow you took. A big fall indeed. Amnesia would be my diagnosis. Only a temporary condition I hope. I’m anticipating that it’s temporary anyway. I’m optimistic that you may be able to shed some light, on a way… on any way at all… to correct the state of things as they are now. He lifts a Cherrywood pipe from an empty emesis basin and puffs on it a few times before setting it back down.
“You know,” says another voice, “I wish you wouldn’t smoke that thing in here. These anesthetic gasses are just waiting for a reason to ignite and blow us all to Hell.”
“Me thinks thou dost protest too much, Dr. Jackson,” says the Man-In-The-White-Coat. “It’s helps me relax. Now if you can just get on with it.”
“Okay, suit yourself. I’ll be ready in just a minute.”
Dancing on the ridge of the dream world, she jolts awake, sucking in lungsful of air. Panic crawls up her legs leaving them numb as it ascends. The drugs are losing their influence over her.
What is the word the Man-In-The-White-Coat said? Amnesia? It’s a funny-sounding word. Again, her eyes part, barely enough to see him smiling at her through the slits of her long, wet eyelashes. She’d hopes if she closes them, she’ll find herself far removed from the world she’s found herself in, and instead, she’d be plunked down into a land of fantasy with tall flowing grasses and running horses. But no, she can only see him, the Man-In-The-White-Coat.
He seems like someone who’s trying to hide his guilt as it threatens to real itself by climbing to surface and show on his face. Just like an ordinary garden spider; the Argiope Aurantia, for instance, as it invites an unsuspecting housefly to dine. All the while the cunning spider knows its motives and, ultimately, the outcome for the housefly.
He leans, unpleasantly, over her. He observes and assesses her, scientifically. Poking and prodding. Tapping and thumping and pinching her with some type of surgical instrument, in places that feels wrong for him to see, much less tap or thump or probe. He sighs, scratching the nape of his grimy neck.
Has boredom set in so quickly for him? His rubber surgical gloves grab and pull her hair as he slides his hands across the top of her head looking for notable abnormalities. Something to chart. A milestone reached, a question ticked off with a check mark. He must find her unremarkable and dull she thinks… she hopes.
Maybe if she doesn’t seem exciting to him, he’ll let her go back to where ever she can’t remember coming from. The pulling of her hair diverts her from focusing on the pain of her slashed-open forehead, where the bandage is secured too tightly.
He moves a steady hand towards her. Assaulting her… again. It feels no less intrusive this time than it did before. Her attempt to raise her hands are hindered by something. Her efforts to defend herself from the suddenness of his well-practiced gesture, his very presence, and his uninvited invasion into her life… such as it is, are thwarted.
The rails of the bed shake stiffly, uninterested in her circumstance, they clack against the metal bed frame. The girl fights harder against the hold the tethers have on her. She finds that she’s tied securely. Her struggles are rendered useless. Her ankles and wrists are attached to the gurney. She’s a bug caught in the liquid resin of a conifer, in time she’ll become encased in a prison of inescapable amber.
The rails rattle louder as she resists the uncomfortably tight bonds that dig into her flesh. If they were any tighter, they would act as a tourniquet cutting off the flow of blood. As it is, the blood circulating through her vascular system is significantly reduced, causing her arms and legs to tingle with the lack of oxygen going to the tissue. The sensation of pins and needles make her wiggle her toes, and flex her fingers, to fill them with freshly oxygenated blood. Flexors and extensors work in a jerky fashion to ease the irritating sensation. She’s going nowhere.
Her body is, for the most part, incapacitated due to the noxious potion the Man-In-The-White-Coat injected into her. The dull pulse of hopelessness taking root, and the despair is biting into her, evermore driving home the reality of the situation at hand.
Her brain is fighting the drugs. She’s rousing, but only slightly. Waking in this room, with these two men, is nearly overwhelming to her. Confusion and disorientation at its finest. She’s Alice, rag-dolling headfirst down the rabbit hole. A horrific cocoon of fear spins around her, encases her, smothering her, slowly. It presses her into the repressive, stuffy, sarcophagus of her own being. The last place she can possibly escape. Inside herself.
She pushes, and she struggles until the claustrophobia of the moment flees, but like the incoming of high tide to drown her indefensible and immature shell, it takes baby-steps and creeps back again. Invisible hands of anxiety choke her, meaning to snuff out the miserably dull spark of sanity and hope which remains within her.
Smells of many odd and curious things; noxious medicines, and sanitizers sting the eyes and the nose. Wafts of chemicals rub raw the inside of her nose, sucking the moisture from the membranes, drying them, cracking them.