I had begun to experience sensation in the tips of my fingers and toes.  I lay still for a moment; the room was quiet. I came to focus, and was relieved to see that my perspective had shifted into place.  Several minutes passed before I noticed something was very, very wrong.

Once, as a child, I had gotten a bad bout of the stomach flu, and had been admitted to the hospital.  I was hooked up to an IV, and they had a small monitor playing with a video for me to watch.  The monitor was clunky, huge, and small-screened.  Next to the monitor was the IV pump.  Instead of the current streamlined, painless needles, those were thick, rather duller, and did not contain the DNA reading technology, which automatically uploaded to the connected screen.  And perhaps the most disturbing of all: the framed pictures and diplomas hanging from the walls were not current ones of the doctors employed at the hospital, but very clearly outdated.I had woken up in the wrong decade.

Despite my best efforts, each time I strained to sit and further exam the room, I felt as if I was being held down by steel arms. Looking down at my weak body, I could see straps pulled taut against my pale skin. To say I was pale was an understatement, I was see through; a glass doll. My veins, though prominent, also seemed bruised; as if they had been relentlessly poked. I couldn’t bear to look at my pathetic body for any longer, i whipped my tear filled eyes up and away.

My eyes met a door; a sealed door It was so protected, in fact, I wondered what was behind it. Craning my neck, I could see a small window right above the door. Beyond it were faces, multiple staring faces. Something was wrong, I was their guinea pig. They enjoyed to watch me suffer, to watch me struggle against the restraints they had placed on me.

I knew I was giving them what they wanted, feeding their sick experiments, but the rage boiled inside me until I couldn’t help but try and rebel. I threw myself against the straps, kicking, screaming, and hoping by some miracle that they would snap. The door in front of me swiftly flew open and crashed against the wall, almost threateningly. A tall figure, covered from head to toe in a white thick white fabric stalked to my bedside. With an iron grip, he clutched my arm and pulled it so he had perfect access to my veins. He reached a large, gloved hand into a pocket and pulled out a large syringe. The needle was filled with a dark red liquid that frothed and sluiced around as if the thaugths in my brain.

With cruel force, the man jabbed it into my arm and efficiently injected me with the serum; I could imagine his smile as he saw me writhe with pain. I could feel the liquid running through my body with a terrible slowness, it felt as though it might replace my blood, replace my air even. The injection, though slow in my veins, worked at lighting speed. Within seconds I could feel that very familiar numbness in my body. My eyes clouded, the world in front of me disappearing behind a thick fog. I knew if I gave in to my body and fell unconscious I would be giving these people what they wanted, fulfilling their sick needs. I tried to swim through all the haze to a stream of consciousness, but within seconds the world had dimmed and I could feel my brain shutting off; I had lost.

Regaining sensation felt like a tedious chore, knowing that at any moment it could ripped away from me. I recognized the feeling of air touching my skin and pried my eyes up, mustering all the strength I had. I expected to see the room distorted, upside down, sideways, anything. I expected the pictures of doctors and diplomas on the wall to be different, but the only thing that had seemed to change was the light flooding the room. It was dark and the hooded figure next to my bed was but a shadow. Wanting to escape the evil white covered men who carried needles and enjoyed pain, I struggled to the furthest corner of the hospital bed, opening my mouth to shout. The person next to me silently shook their head and pressed a raised finger to my mouth. This person didn’t want to harm me, for some reason, I could tell they had good intentions, or at least better intentions than the other.

Working swiftly, the shadow undid my restraints and took my hand, begging me to move from my bed. It had been years since I had last moved, my body was as flimsy as paper and I knew my legs wouldn’t be able to support the weight of my body.

The hand continued to drag me until I was out of the bed, my legs collapsing like the useless weight they were. Pain stabbed at me like hundreds of little knives, and I had to use all my effort to keep from crying out. My captor, or savior, hauled me to the door and opened it slowly, making sure it didn’t squeal with it’s age. Once past the door, I was drowning in a sea of white. The floors, the walls, the bodies that littered the floor like garbage. Large, white clothes figures piled on top of each other, each accompanied with a large syringe sticking out of their arms. I gasped with disgust and felt bile rise up my throat, I was certain I would have thrown up if I had had anything to eat, but I had the feeling they didn’t feed me here. The only thing of color in this sterile hall was the person holding my hand and carrying my weight, they wore all black and snuck around like a thief.

The exhaustion of moving slowly crept upon all my features and I could feel my eyes weighing down, only opening slightly to acknowledge the night air that I was greeted with as I was dragged outside. The invigorating air seemed to wake me up slightly and I could see a large black van in front of me.