subject 19 — a short tale

Below is my short fiction response to prompts proposed by Jolene on her post at Poetry & More. Check out the link to see the criteria she gave her readers either before or after reading to support another online author. Follow her, if you want to be really cool.

I didn’t do a ton of research before writing this (and it is very much improvisational), so read it as a pulp tale, one not intended to leverage realism to any extent.

subject 19

Subject 19…?

His head throbbed in time the hum of the machinery all around as Elias stirred.

Subject 19…?

With eyes still closed against the brightness of the room beyond his eyelids, he groaned.

Subject 19? Can you hear me, now?

A machine made a pinging sound near his left arm. He knew it was a sound he should have found reassuring under normal conditions. It meant he was alive after the procedure, that his heart was beating steadily on its own. It was always a fear that he would not wake when someone put him under. But against the backdrop of the brightness piercing his still-closed eyes, it became a teeth-clenching aggravation with each radar sounding echoing off the room around him.

He tried to tell them through his clenched teeth that it was all wrong. Everything was too bright. He needed to get out of there, right away. But every fiber of his being tensed. It was the white.

Subject 19 is trying to say something, but I can’t understand what he’s trying to say.

“Subject 19, you need to calm down.”

With his eyes closed, teeth clenched in a seizure of fear, Elias strained against the restraints that held him to the gurney, his groan evolving into a feral wail trapped behind a frozen jaw and whistling out his teeth.

“He’s having a paroxysmal anxiety attack. He is just disoriented by waking from the procedure. Give him 2 cc of diazepam.”

..he room is wrong the room bright the roo… the thoughts ran frantic though his skull until a warm ocean wave washed up his arm and throughout his body. The room he was in was too… white. He could tell that even with his eyes closed.

With the tension fading from his jaw, Elias was finally able to speak, although his mouth felt mushy and filled with mush. “The lights,” he slurred. “Turn down the lights. There is too much white.”

His record should have noted the condition. They had promised him something other than white when he signed up. The room should have been grey, or green, or blue. Not white. Someone had forgotten to tell his medical team. They must have. He could think of any other reason than it had been a terrible clerical mistake.

“Fine, fine,” said someone out of sight. “Some of them do have light sensitivity after the procedure until they get used to the implant.”

Elias could see the room’s lights dim through his eyelids. He fought the urge to keep them clamped shut so he would not have to look at all of the white he knew was lurking in the shadows on the other side of opening them.

“Not lights sensitivity,” he muttered as he slowly opened his eyes. “There should have been a note in my file. I’m a lifelong leukophobe.” His jaw cracked as he stretched it open at the time his eyes revealed the horror coloring the pocked ceiling tile over his head.

“Baloney,” said someone out of his line of sight and gave a hearty guffaw . Elias could not bring himself to turn away from the ceiling tile to see who spoke, though he was fully aware that white walls surrounded him. “That’s a manufactured phobia.”

He was used to such pronouncements and he gave a nervous chuckle just like he always did when someone disbelieved his condition. And just like every other time, he said, “I wish someone would carefully explain that to my brain, which has a decidedly different opinion about the matter.”

“I assure you it is not manufactured, Gary. Rare, but a serious condition. Keep the room dark for the time being.” The voice turned to him as someone put on a head-mounted examination light. “We’ll transfer you to a room with less white decor while you finish your recovery after I finish my examination. I apologize that detail was not communicated better to us.”

A man leaned over him and began to examine the place when they had installed their little box in the base of his skull. Elias blinked against the bright light shining in his eyes and ignored the litany of observations coming out of the surgeon’s mouth, trying very hard not to notice all of the white in the room.

Project Parity, they had called it in the sessions where the ethics team tried their best to explain just what kind of experiment he was agreeing to become part of. Reams and reams of papers filled with legalese that he had not much cared to read nor understand. He was desperate for cash and they were paying him far too well to bother caring much exactly what Project Parity was meant to accomplish. With the amount they were paying, he could finally put his past behind him and forget that alcohol-fueled night that changed his life forever.

There had been so much blood. He had no clue that people had so much blood in them, especially someone as small as that woman walking down that country road at three a.m. four long years ago. In fact, that’s all people are, fragile sacks meant to hold all that blood.

Her body had tumbled over the hood of his car and shattered his windshield, managing somehow to remain stuck partway through even after he slammed on the brakes.

And then she did not even have the decency to die right away, and he was forced to watch her life slip away after manhandling her out of the windshield and laying her out in the twin beams of his car’s headlights.

She had tried to say something to him before she passed but she only choked up blood and laid there in silence. He had no clue how long he sat there willing her to come back to life afterwards. During that time, however, he had memorized every part of her that had not been ruined by the accident. Especially those eyes. It was the least he could do, he figured.

He eventually shoved her body into the ditch and drove to Round Lake, a deep pond a few miles from his apartment. He ditched the car in the water to hide the evidence of what he had done. They found her body the next day. No one had yet found the car, thankfully. It would only be a matter of time, however. Then they would know who killed Kyra Vance, as the news stories named her.

He needed to leave as soon as he was released from the clinic, his cash in hand. Screw the legally binding agreements for follow-up visits. He had already waited too long to get out of here.

“You were made aware of the nature of Project Purity before this procedure, correct?” asked the doctor examining him. Elias nodded. “They should have warned you there may be some enhanced visual and auditory stimuli until you find your new baseline, but most of our experimental partners find it goes away within a week or two.” Elias nodded. He vaguely recalled some of that from the pre-procedure sessions.

“When do I get paid?” he asked.

The doctor chuckled. “You’d be surprise at how often one of the first questions. You first installment should be available when you are discharged in a day or two. The follow-up payments will be payable after each check-in, although they are not as large as that for the initial payment.”

Elias did not recall being told that it was not a lump sum and was disappointed by the news, but figured it should be sizable enough to skip off to somewhere far away from here and forget his way back.

“Project Parity may take a while for you to get used to the effect. It should help you cope with your leukopobia a little better, as it is a neural implant designed to eliminate the cognitive lag between thought and speech, theoretically allowing for perfect communication and the reduction of social anxiety. When you are in an uncomfortably white room, you should have fewer episodes of that feedback loop that makes it hard for you to speak coherently, and causes you jaw to clench and lock up.”

Elias had not known that would be the case. They had either not told him or he had forgotten to listen.

“However, there is one minor side-effect until you learn how to cope with your new reality,” said the doctor, continuing his examination. “Some of our subjects have needed to adjust to that lack of lag time between being able to say something and it coming out. Part of the follow-up visits are to help you relearn how to have a filter when the situation calls for one. We can’t have you just blurting out what’s on your mind now can we?”

“Is it working now? I don’t have a problem keeping my thoughts to myself.” Elias was finding that headlamp bouncing around to get annoying and he figured he might say something about it if the Parity was working as intended.

“I was just about to initialize the module. I’ve calibrated it for the least sensitive setting. Get ready. You may feel a little dizzy at first.”

The doctor rested his hand on the back of Elias’s neck and Elias heard a small clicking sound. The examination headlight went off and Elias could see the doctor for the first time since the examination began.

“Oh no,” he whispered immediately.

Paging Doctor Vance. Paging Doctor Vance. Please come to the staging area. Your next subject is waiting for you in pre-op.

“Is there something wrong?” the doctor asked, blinking with a friendly smile.

Elias had reoccurring nightmares about her eyes looking into his. These were not Kyra’s eyes, but they were the same.

Project Parity took over before Elias could stop himself.

“Kyra…,” he said. “I am the one who killed your daughter with my car. I’m ran into her on County Road 9 that night. I’m the one who dumped her in the ditch. I killed your daughter.”

The gentle smile slipped from Doctor Vance’s face, becoming a wicked downward crescent in the dim light.

Without warning, he stood up and spoke to someone Elias could not see.

“Turn on the lights. All of them. As bright as they will go so that Subject 19 can see the room in all its whiteness. I want someone to flood this room with as much white as they can.”

“Now, excuse me. I have an operation to perform,” he said, storming out of the recovery room. His assistants rushed to make his command a reality.

It was soon after that the screaming started.