Masterpiece- Chapter 2

It was only maybe half an hour or so, but it felt like days passed as the man in white poked, prodded, and sliced every inch of his body.

“Why,” Daniel croaked, his head lolling back and forth and his face contorted in pain, “why are you doing this? What did I do wrong...”

The man in white didn’t say anything at first, instead drawing a small blood sample for what seemed like the umpteenth time, carefully placing it a neat brown case amongst the other various samples he took. Then he turned and regarded him with a patronizing, irritated expression, as if his question seemed unwarranted.

“Why? Well, why not?” he’d snapped. Then his eyes lit up and he smiled warmly once more, as if entertaining a child. “That is, I love the suspense that comes before a surprise, don’t you?” He’d turned back around, fiddling with something or other, then brought out a branding rod and a blowtorch, switching it on and heating up the cast iron, turning it over and over as if roasting a marshmallow.

“I find surprises, even the nasty ones, exciting,” he explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “I get bored very easily, being cooped up down here, and I’ve always fantasized about how I’d pull off the ‘big reveal’. As you can imagine, we don’t often get volunteers. Present company excepted, of course.” He flashed an impish grin at Daniel, and he turned his face so he wouldn’t have to look at him.

“Ah-ah-ah, Danny-boy. Keep your head straight, wouldn’t want to do this more than once, right?”

Daniel, too far gone, nodded, the room spinning as the pain he felt all over turned to nausea, but snapped back to the present when the man socked him in the face.

“I said don’t move,” he growled. Daniel tried to cry out in protest, but the frequent blood samples had taken their toll, and his mouth felt full of cotton as he let his breath out in a painful hiss.

Then the brand made contact, and he did scream.

He screamed long and hard, until his throat broke and he tasted copper, and all the while the man in white laughed maniacally, the brand tossed on the no-longer-pristine floor.

It was only when his screams died down into whimpers and his breaths turned shallow that the man sighed and caressed his face with the back of his hand, his blissfully cool hand, and spoke gently to him, like a man would speak to a sow that had just given birth.

“Shush, my darling, shush my sweet, it will all be over soon,” he whispered in his ear, and then his hand was gone, and the burning came back, and his muscles went slack as the gurney began to move and jostle his tortured frame, sending wave after wave of pain coursing through him.

As he traveled through the echoing halls of the research wing, he saw his coworkers, people he considered friends. He tried to say something, anything, but all he could manage was a pitiful moan as he passed, and it didn’t matter because they didn’t even look at him. Not a one.

Now he knew the look on their face was remorse. Now he knew they were in on it, that they were in on the farce, that they had given him false hope and that they knew there would be consequences.

But they had done it countless times, and their guilt wasn’t even enough for them to look at the horror they caused.
It was for the greater good, after all, they thought.

How many bones does it take to build a staircase to heaven?

Daniel had been given countless years, perhaps eons to consider the answer, and now he knew.

As many as it takes.

---

The actual process was simple. Torture and drug the subject to a state of compliance, brand its forehead with its number, and bring it to the testing lab.

This particular subject, subject number 42, had been “hired” for one reason and one reason only- to test a prototype device that was set to disassemble the subject on one end and reassemble them on the other. In short, a teleportation device.

This project, code-named “Star Trek”, had worked on inanimate objects and small creatures such as mice, with no ill effects. So, after rigorous testing (as well as significant power increases- they were testing a human, after all), they figured it was time to bring out their latest lab rat and give it a whirl.

All of this, of course, was only heard, not seen by the man floating in the void. He was barely conscious during this time, so it sort of made sense, he supposed- much like a livestream, if the video cut out, only the audio would be heard. The only thing he could make out was a series of blurs, which persisted up until he felt the cold metal of the chair and the rough fibers of the ropes digging into his abused flesh.

He felt a slap, this time on his other cheek, and squinted his eyes open to find himself face to face with what looked like a massive ray-gun. He whipped his head around, looking at each and every one of the grim-faced scientists, hoping to find someone, anyone, who would release him, but every one of them looked away, none of them finding enough courage to look him in the eyes.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Fire it up!”

The scientists jumped to attention, scrambling over and typing various commands into consoles all along the wall, and he could do nothing but face the intimidating machine as he heard a thrumming sound build deep within its bowels.
As he stared sure death in the face, every one of his regrets rushed to the surface in a blinding torrent.

I should have pushed harder for my promotion

Initiating phase countdown

I should have confronted my boss about my job

10...9...8...

Scientists were screaming at each other in desperate voices.

I should have defended myself in that alleyway

7...6...5...

Doors opening and closing, people evacuating.

I should have refused the offer

4...3...2...

Water trickling down from the smoke alarms. The smell of circuitry burning.

I should have...I should have...

1...

“Get on the floor- she’s gonna blow!”

Janet I’m so, so sorry

---

A flash of light, a brief, unimaginable burst of white-hot pain, and then darkness.

The man felt it all, like he had for the past several hundred years, and every time he screamed into the void, a scream of bitter hatred and self-loathing.

But nothing responded, for there was nothing left but him, his memories, and infinite darkness.

The man floated there, and if he had a body, he would shiver as the crippling loneliness overtook him and the darkness left him to his own grim imaginings. This was normal- almost like whoever was feeding him this loop of memories had to rewind the footage and play it from the beginning again. The first couple of times he thought of this, he found it funny, a bitter chuckle rising from his nonexistent throat.

It wasn’t funny anymore, because after the first few times he realized that when this time came, when his memories ran out and he didn’t have the voices of his friends to comfort him, it left him alone with his thoughts.

And that, he had come to find out, was the cruelest punishment of all.

But this time, nothing came up. No dim red light as he was born for the 200th time, no gasp of air as he took in his first breath again, no sound of doctor’s voices or his mother’s words, tinged with exhaustion.

He began to panic, started thrashing wildly in the nothingness, looking for something, any sort of stimulus at all.
And then he saw it. The tiniest, dimmest pinprick of light, seemingly a million miles away. And he heard a voice, a different one. A pleasant voice, beckoning him forwards.

Did I make it? He thought, hope filling him as he struggled and thrashed towards it, Did I make it to heaven?
The light grew closer, and his heart leaped when he realized that the light wasn’t just another memory reel, wasn’t another figment of his delusions. The light was real, very real, and it led somewhere. He felt an invisible force grab him around the waist and begin to pull him forwards, gently at first, then more and more insistently as the light, no, the entrance grew larger and larger in his vision.

God? Jesus? Is that you? He thought excitedly. Then he spoke it in case they didn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t being pulled now but dragged, closer and closer and faster and faster and now he was screaming, begging it to stop because it was going too fast and there was no stopping it now, and he was going to crash and burn and die a second time...

And then he woke up.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6