• Twisted



    Our story begins one spring afternoon outside of our local mall. A few of my friends and I are walking down the sidewalk from Hastings to the theater. All of the sudden a nut job in a ski mask rounds the corner on a Harley-Davidson and shoots at us with a pistol. There’s a sharp pain in my back as the nut job drives away. My last memory of this is the sidewalk rushing up to say “hi!” as my friends scream my name.

    The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital room. I groan and try to move but I can’t move, I notice that there is a mask over my face that keeps me breathing. I begin to panic as thoughts of fear rush through my mind as if it’s a super highway of terror.

    My thoughts are cut short when the smiling male doctor comes in, under normal circumstances I’d be pissed off to see a smug doctor, but my brain is so far into panic mode that I don’t care if he’s smug or not. Hell I don’t even care if he’s smart or even if he's a good doctor I just want him to talk me down.

    “I see you’re awake” are the first words out of the doctor’s mouth; so far he’s failing to talk me down. “The drive-by you were part of has shattered your spine so bad that it’s a miracle that you’re even alive” This guy sucks at talking people down.

    “But even though you can’t move, talk, or even breathe under your own power, your 'condition' can be fixed.” My heart races as I realize what this means. I can be normal again. “The procedure is done by attaching a metal device to your back that acts as an artificial spine of sorts, giving you full bodily movement once more.

    “Though seeing as you lack any solid way to communicate with us we must have your next of kin sign the papers for you. The operation will take place shortly.” The good doctor places a gas mask on me and I feel light-headed for a few moments as my body passes into a deep sleep.

    While my body sleeps my mind remains quite active, fabricating dreams of grandeur and non-paralysis. This is probably the best dream I’ve ever had, and I find myself wishing it would go on forever.

    My eyes slowly open as I let a groan escape my lips. Where am I? That’s my first thought, which is quickly followed by: I was at the mall, but something happened after this all the memories flood though my head like a torrent each though overlapping the one before it. a hospital, I was shot, spine shattered, paralyzed, found hope, fixed, dreams, beautiful dreams, spine, fake spine, new spine is my hope.

    I shake my head violently as I begin to sit up, my head spinning from the onslaught of thoughts. I see a stir to my right and I turn my head marginally in that direction to see my girlfriend Leila. I see her eyes open followed by her jumping at the sight of me. I assumed this was from my hair covering my eyes and that my head is tilted down. She gets over being startled and runs over to me and glomps me, squealing as she does so.

    “Rey!” she squeals in her velvetesque voice “Oh my God I was so afraid you would never wake up” She’s crying profusely now as I slide my hand across her face and kiss her gently.

    “Why were you afraid I would never wake up, my love?” I stare into her tear swept eyes as if to let her know this isn’t a dream

    “Because,” she cries “The doctor said that your brain may be damaged by the surgery and that there was a 30% chance you may stay like that forever”

    I just smile at her “Well I’m awake aren’t I” I’m not sure why but for some reason I felt that what she just said should have bothered me, but it didn’t.

    Leila smiles softly as she lays her head against my chest, cuddling against me lovingly. I smile just as I kiss the top of her head I doze off soon after.

    I hear the door to the room I’m in open and I look over at it as the smug doctor from before the surgery enters the room. “Well well well” he says softly trying not to wake Leila “It seems our surgery was success. Since you’re awake and can sign yourself out, I’ll let you do just that.”

    The good ol’ doc hands me a clipboard that pretty much says that I’m signing out with the doc’s recommendation and that it’s safe for me to go home. I tell him “Thank you.” as I sign my name on the clipboard.

    About five minutes later I find myself walking out of the hospital with Leila by my side, hand in hand as we walk to my car .

    I sit down in the driver’s seat of my Ferraris and turn the key causing the car to roar to life like a sleeping giant. God Damn I’ve missed this car. I pull out of the parking lot of the surprisingly vacant hospital parking lot and navigate my way down town to the apartment Leila and I share.

    ***********************************


    Months pass as I reintegrate myself into my normal life of work, college, and Leila. I go to the Doctor for a check up and he informs me that there’s a slight malfunction in the spine’s circuitry that could cause problems later on. I ask him if he can fix it.

    “Of course I can. What do you expect I am a med school graduate who just finished school?” I heave a sigh and smile at my doctor’s personality as he gives me a gas mask and allows me to pass out. I wake up several hours later and the doctor said I was good as new.

    I pay the doctor and say “Thanks, Doc. I feel great”

    The doctor pats my shoulder and says “It’s what I do son.”

    I leave the office and I go home to get my backpack, I have 20 minutes to get to my religion class. So I grab my backpack and I put my ear buds to my walkman in and I walk out the door as I jog to class, since it’s within walking distance.

    About halfway there I get onto the school’s campus and I notice that it’s almost entirely empty. “That’s weird, usually this place is packed with students. “ I dismiss the thought and continue to class not noticing the floating objects such as glasses and back packs nearby as unusual.

    I get to class and it all plays out normally as the teacher lectures to us about Islam and It’s dangers to those of us in the Western World. I take notes as per normal and write down what he has assigned to us as homework. The bell rings and we all leave the class room.

    On my way home I accidently bump into a young woman, knocking the books she has out of her slender arms. “Oops! I’m sorry about that ma’am!” I say as I crouch down to pick up her books.

    She crouches down beside me helping me pick up her books “It’s no problem. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” She smiles sheepishly

    “Would you like help with those” I point to her books

    “No thank you” she says “I got it” she smiles and gives me a kiss on the cheek as she departs.

    I proceed home, smiling happily; not noticing that I’m the only person on the streets and that there’s no one else at the apartment complex where Leila and I live.

    I open the door to the apartment and Leila glomps me “BABY!!!!!!” I fall over onto the carpet of our living room

    “Hello there, love!” I manage to croak out as she sits on top of me. “How are you today?”

    She smiles as she runs a hand up and down my chest “Come to the bedroom and I’ll show you baby.”

    I flash a mischievous grin “sounds like lots of fun.” And so we go at it. I’ll skip over this part to spare you the details.

    *************************************


    Several weeks pass, then while I’m reading a book on our bed, Leila comes up to me looking both excited in terrified in a T-shirt that said “Fantasy” on it and a tight pair of panties that made me want to listen to her.

    “Baby,” she says hesitantly “I-I-I’m pregnant”

    I black out from the shock. When I wake up I’m in an Interrogation room of our local police station facing a burly police officer. “Where am I?” I manage to utter.

    The police officer slaps me across the face and says “You scum, why would you do it, huh? Why’d you rape that poor girl!?”

    I’m startled by the accusation and I immediately deny it, the cop slaps me once more.

    “We both know you did it! Now fess up so we can get this over with!” the lunatic cop screams.

    “I didn’t do it!” I scream but then my heart stops as they bring in that woman I saw on my way home from class.

    “See this girl? This is the girl you defiled!”

    “No! I don’t even know her name!” I scream and then she bursts into tears

    “How could you?!” She manages to scream “I thought you loved me!”

    “Love you? I don’t even know your name!” I yell

    “Enough!” yells the cop as he takes the girl out of the room and puts me in a jail cell.

    Soon after a man in a suit comes to my cell, closely followed by a guard “Come on” he says “let’s get out of here. I’ve paid your bail”

    “Okay.” Is the only thing I can manage until I get outside “Thank yo-“ I turn around to say thanks to his face but he’s gone. I take this as a sign and I leave in the direction of my apartment, the image of that woman haunting me. Who is she? I think but I dismiss the thought deciding that I should be more focused on Leila and the baby.

    When I get home Leila kisses me and acts as if nothing happened. I kiss her and snuggle her and bite her neck before we finally go at it.

    Then in the middle of it Leila turns into that blonde girl. I gasp from surprise as she struggles to get away. I let her up but then she tries to strangles me. I manage to get on top of her and I push a pillow over her face, smothering her as she struggled against me. Then suddenly the movement stops and her body goes limp.

    A fear builds in me as I think about lifting the pillow, but I couldn’t bear to see the dead face, so I lift it just enough to see the hair. It was Leila’s dark curly hair.

    My heart races as the realization that I not only just killed my girlfriend but my own unborn child as well, it's too much to bear. So I crawl into a corner and I cry my eyes out. That’s when I blacked out.

    I wake up in a court room full of people, not knowing how I got here. I see Leila on the stand, though it’s not just Leila, It’s that girl as well. They’ve been blended into one person. The left half of her body is Leila, her hair is brown, and her eye is blue and sewn open. She’s wearing a blue shirt. The right half is that blonde girl. Her hair is blonde and her eye is closed she has a red shirt on. The two halves of them are staples together with surgical staples.

    The twisted hybrid of the two of them are spouting out pure lies of a bloodbath and fabricating scenes of inexplicable horror. I won’t tell what all was said.

    At the end of their testimony the judge looked at me and said “well, is there anything you’d like to say for yourself?”

    I look to my right hoping to see my lawyer there, but he is absent. The stress becomes overwhelming. No, no! This isn’t right! How could this happen? Why is this happening? Nothing makes any sense!

    “I’ll take that as a ‘No’ Mr. Lawlet. Has The jury reached a verdict?

    For the first time I look at the jury and I see that they’re all clones of the Chimera. I know that this isn’t going to end well “Guilty!” they all proclaim in unison. I black out once more

    I wake up in a prison cell without a door, though to me it’s much more reminiscent of a cage from Silent Hill. I groan and curl up into a ball in the closest corner of this dark cell.

    How’d I get here? Where am I? How did all of this happen? Why’d it happen to me? Is this real or is it fake? What caused everything to go wrong? It’s all wrong so very wrong!! Is this how it ends!? Am I supposed to just die here? I begin to think about my precious Leila. Why’d I have to kill her? Did I even kill her? What’s wrong with this place!?

    **************************************


    These thoughts go on for days, months, maybe even years. I’m not sure, but I know that I never felt hungry or had to relieve myself of waste. I don’t remember what my name is or even if I had a name. My clothes begin to stink and become crusty

    Days, weeks, months, years, decades. It’s all the same.


    Then out of the darkness I hear the click of a Zippo head followed by a short burst of flame that wasn’t even on for a second, then the click of a Zippo head closing. This sound continues to cycle as I hear a soft chuckle in the darkness, which is only broken by the periodic flash of flame from his Zippo

    “Who’s there?!” I call my voice cracking because I haven’t used it in so long.

    “Who I am is of no importance, maybe I’m God or maybe I’m a figment of your demented little imagination. Either way I’m here to offer you an 'out'”. I can’t see the man but I can hear him.

    “How?” I ask desperately

    “We’ll get to how soon enough; to understand how to get out of here you must first understand how you got in.”

    “I don’t care how, just as long as I’m out of this cell!”

    “I’m not just getting you out of this cell I’m getting you out of this world as well.” He must see my confused expression because he laughs “but where you go is up to you.”

    “I have options?” I ask dumbly

    “Yes. But let me explain a few things first.” He takes a breath “you are in a coma, you were placed in a coma during your surgery to get the artificial spine. The surgeon had no clue what he was doing and caused significant brain damage and put you in a coma. Your family, being quite sure you’d never wake up, put you into cryogenic sleep to keep you alive, but your comatose dreams became prolonged nightmares that you couldn’t control. You follow me so far?”

    “Yes.”

    “Good. Now, you have three options. One, you can wake up from cryogenic sleep and be out of this hell for good. The only problem is that there’s no way to tell how long you’ve been asleep. It could honestly be minutes or centuries. Also you May not be able to move unless your brain has healed enough to allow a connection to the fake spine.

    “Two, you can sit here and rot away in this prison cell until humanity dies then you’ll unfreeze and begin to age and die.”

    “What’s the third option?”

    “Door number three? Oh that’s where we start this whole dream over. You may or may not remember what’s happened before now but the dream may place you right back here."

    “...I want to see Leila again. The real her.”

    “So you want to go to the real world?”

    “Yes!”

    “Good choice. But there’s a catch.” He chuckles “to wake up you must cause sufficient stress on your mind and body”

    “How do I do that?”

    “Oh that’s simple. You just jump off of a tall building.”

    “ I hate heights!” I groan

    I hear a chuckle “you won’t after this, I assure you.”

    “Okay how do we get out of here?”

    “Like this” suddenly I’m on top of the Empire State Building, right on the ******** edge staring down at the abandoned night-time streets at least 200 feet below me. Well s**t.

    “You can still quit if you want” I hear the voice say

    “No... I can’t” I jump off the building, my heart racing as I plummet downwards head first. I begin to count down

    10

    The sidewalk is coming closer.

    9

    The building is rushing by me, as if it’s the one that's moving.

    8

    A farmiliar song flows through my head...

    7

    "Have you ever wondered why..."

    6

    "In a dream you can touch a falling sky..."

    5

    "Or fly to the heavens that watch over you..."

    4

    "Telling me it's all voodoo."

    3

    I hear voices but I don’t understand them

    2

    I smell a sterilized room

    1

    I hear a person scream “Call them!”

    0

    I feel my body impact the ground violently, then I feel a burning light as my eyes open, maybe for the first time in centuries.


    “Oh my God! He’s alive!”

    Is that her voice?…… Does this mean I'm home?