It passes through you like a small electric current, it is the precursor of something that is coming, the chill in your spine, the feeling is unmistakable. He is coming.
She lies in the cell, on her side , her legs bent and held together by her arms. It is as if she is trying to close in her own self, to dissappear into her own being, to run away from what she has to suffer. "The womb" he calls it, he also calls it a way, a primal reaction of the body, a posture that protects the major internal organs - the heart, the stomach, the face and most organs of perception, a primal reaction that is meant to protect the body from damage in case of adverse circumstances. She remembers these words by heart, because as he had explained to her later, the pain associated with them is so immense that it has formed an inverse nervous connection with the brain. She remembers it because of the pain and pain makes her remember it.
She is an experiment, she has been explained that very clearly. As far as the State is concerned she does not exist, an unregistered alien and hence, it has been made very clear, there is no means of her subsistence outside the cell. He is her observer, he is a behaviorologist (but that he has often told with her, is a word that is used for that lack of a better word) and he is in charge of four other subjects like her, one more female and two males. They are experiments that are put to certain stimuli in order to study the human brain, her choice was pain. It was a perfectly random choice generated by the central computer and as he always joked, just her luck. The other subjects had different stimuli.
She can hear the footsteps, the heavy slow tread of her observer. She stiffens as every nerve in her body fires, the pavlovian training kicks in. This was her first training as her brain automatically goes back to her first days of stimulation training when clothed in a full body suit filled with electrical endings, she was trained (like Pavlov's bitch, her observer always commented) to have every single nerve ending fire in her body in response to her observer's tread, her observer's form and her observer's face. It was not painful, but it was over powering, and almost erotic, like her whole body was covered by millions of insects that walked with soft velvety legs. They called it the initial "ice-breaking", the basic idea was that the sensory overload left the body tired as well as open to further sensory training. It also made her pain more painful. She had been demonstrated this fact without doubt, she had been sujected to pain before and after the sensory overload, the pain had risen five fold (the wonders of modern technology her observer called it).
He comes in thorugh the cell door as her arms loosen and her legs spread down as her body limps to a vulnerable posture, she is lying on her back, legs spread, arms limp on her sides. Her brain is already slipping as only a single thread of thought remains, a thought about the pain that is about to come. This is also a part of her training, her observer had told her, the more you think about pain, the more aware you become of where it will come and your body thristily fires your nerve ending at those parts readying you for the pain and making it stronger.
He snaps his finger twice as suddenly her brain falls numb. This is the signal of the end, the only pain retarding training of her body. It signals the stop of the day's training. She is confused and almost relieved (but her mind flies back to the day when he had subjected her to the step-up pain drill, numbing and activating her body for longer intervals on the same day till she was sure she had gone mad with pain and its abscence) What is it this time?
He says "No training for you today subject three."
He sits down on the bunk in the cell and looks down at her. She can only move her eye and she stares at him, as her brain and body both lie numb. "What does he want this time?", she thinks.
He speaks "Have you ever wondered why you have not taken your own life yet?"
She thinks "My own life, taking my own life, dying? but that is impossible ... I have to live ... for ... for ... for life itself."
He speaks again "It is because of what we trained you for, the proto-training. We had to have subjects who would not, no cannot take their own lives. How else would we be able to continue our experiments? Our subjects should never be able to commit serious bodily harm on themselves."
She thinks "Taking my own life , it would end this but ... but ... but ...."
He says "Don't even try, you can't."
He gets up and leaves. She lies on the floor numb, it will take two hours for the numbness to dissappear. But her heart has numbed as well.
I wrote this some time in my senior year, I was trying to describe "Pain" as well as I could by trying to weave it into quasi-sadistic setting. I plan to write compositions about the other subjects as well.
She lies in the cell, on her side , her legs bent and held together by her arms. It is as if she is trying to close in her own self, to dissappear into her own being, to run away from what she has to suffer. "The womb" he calls it, he also calls it a way, a primal reaction of the body, a posture that protects the major internal organs - the heart, the stomach, the face and most organs of perception, a primal reaction that is meant to protect the body from damage in case of adverse circumstances. She remembers these words by heart, because as he had explained to her later, the pain associated with them is so immense that it has formed an inverse nervous connection with the brain. She remembers it because of the pain and pain makes her remember it.
She is an experiment, she has been explained that very clearly. As far as the State is concerned she does not exist, an unregistered alien and hence, it has been made very clear, there is no means of her subsistence outside the cell. He is her observer, he is a behaviorologist (but that he has often told with her, is a word that is used for that lack of a better word) and he is in charge of four other subjects like her, one more female and two males. They are experiments that are put to certain stimuli in order to study the human brain, her choice was pain. It was a perfectly random choice generated by the central computer and as he always joked, just her luck. The other subjects had different stimuli.
She can hear the footsteps, the heavy slow tread of her observer. She stiffens as every nerve in her body fires, the pavlovian training kicks in. This was her first training as her brain automatically goes back to her first days of stimulation training when clothed in a full body suit filled with electrical endings, she was trained (like Pavlov's bitch, her observer always commented) to have every single nerve ending fire in her body in response to her observer's tread, her observer's form and her observer's face. It was not painful, but it was over powering, and almost erotic, like her whole body was covered by millions of insects that walked with soft velvety legs. They called it the initial "ice-breaking", the basic idea was that the sensory overload left the body tired as well as open to further sensory training. It also made her pain more painful. She had been demonstrated this fact without doubt, she had been sujected to pain before and after the sensory overload, the pain had risen five fold (the wonders of modern technology her observer called it).
He comes in thorugh the cell door as her arms loosen and her legs spread down as her body limps to a vulnerable posture, she is lying on her back, legs spread, arms limp on her sides. Her brain is already slipping as only a single thread of thought remains, a thought about the pain that is about to come. This is also a part of her training, her observer had told her, the more you think about pain, the more aware you become of where it will come and your body thristily fires your nerve ending at those parts readying you for the pain and making it stronger.
He snaps his finger twice as suddenly her brain falls numb. This is the signal of the end, the only pain retarding training of her body. It signals the stop of the day's training. She is confused and almost relieved (but her mind flies back to the day when he had subjected her to the step-up pain drill, numbing and activating her body for longer intervals on the same day till she was sure she had gone mad with pain and its abscence) What is it this time?
He says "No training for you today subject three."
He sits down on the bunk in the cell and looks down at her. She can only move her eye and she stares at him, as her brain and body both lie numb. "What does he want this time?", she thinks.
He speaks "Have you ever wondered why you have not taken your own life yet?"
She thinks "My own life, taking my own life, dying? but that is impossible ... I have to live ... for ... for ... for life itself."
He speaks again "It is because of what we trained you for, the proto-training. We had to have subjects who would not, no cannot take their own lives. How else would we be able to continue our experiments? Our subjects should never be able to commit serious bodily harm on themselves."
She thinks "Taking my own life , it would end this but ... but ... but ...."
He says "Don't even try, you can't."
He gets up and leaves. She lies on the floor numb, it will take two hours for the numbness to dissappear. But her heart has numbed as well.
I wrote this some time in my senior year, I was trying to describe "Pain" as well as I could by trying to weave it into quasi-sadistic setting. I plan to write compositions about the other subjects as well.
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