RESURGENCE

Conrad's diary & CHAPTER 1

THE PROCEDURE

From Conrad Hayley’s Diary-

October 27, 2015

I entered the metallic room as I came into this world—stark naked. Soon I was lying inside the orange-colored, eight-by-four foot painted rectangle on the floor. The sound of a heavy metallic door being bolted from outside startled me. There was no going back now. The room was pitch black and I shut my eyes. No point in staring in the dark. After a minute or so, I felt cycles of hot and cold air on my skin, which was as relaxing as a good massage. Just when I was about to doze off, I heard music—Rock ‘n’ Roll from the sixties. Now I knew why the boys wanted to know what music I liked.

I felt it on my skin first. It was as if I was being kissed by a thousand lips simultaneously; feather touches all over my body. It surely was unlike any sensation I had felt in my life, and the toughest part was to stay still. Years from now, when I undergo this therapy again, I will think of this sensation. I could get used to this feeling of pure bliss, I thought.

The next minute my pleasure turned into pain. I felt it in my muscles—a million sharp contractions followed by sudden expansions. My whole body twitched; even my tongue. It was hard not to choke on my own saliva. I was ready to run out of the room at this point, but my body did not obey my will, and I couldn’t move an inch.

I hated those nerdy boys. I swore that I would kill them if I made it out alive. Taking each breath was a struggle, but my seventy-three-year-old body kept fighting. Slowly, the pain faded away. I felt cold and wished for a blanket—the chilling air seemed to touch my soul. All my muscles went numb, and I could feel something crawling on my bones. I thought I was going to die. To breathe became incredibly hard, but somehow air managed to find my lungs. I swear that every breath seemed to be my last. Christ must have experienced a similar pain on the cross, I thought. It gave me strength, but a little bit of guilt as well.

After the longest eighteen minutes of my life, I opened my eyes to see the room lit with dim, blue light. For a moment I thought I was dead and afterlife was blue, but I realized the light was coming from a small bulb on the wall to my right. Soon I heard the unbolting of the metallic door, and daylight filled the room through a small crack. The boys had told me that I would be able to walk out of the room, but I hardly had any strength to crawl out of that torture chamber.

As I crawled out of the metallic room on my knees, the boys were ecstatic. The experiment was a success, and I changed my mind about killing those nerds.

  

CHAPTER ONE

SIX MONTHS AGO

April 5, 2015

Gordon Price could not remember the last time his desk looked so empty—only two things sat on it today. An old pen stand that his wife had gifted him when they were in college, and a turtle-shaped paperweight that he had bought during his last trip to Hawaii. He wondered if the wood had changed color, or if it was a different season than summer when he last saw the desk this bare.

Earlier that morning, the rattling sound of the lawn mower had made his hangover almost unbearable, and he had shut all the windows in his office to keep out the noise. Now, as he was about to open the window behind his desk, he smiled at his own reflection in the window glass: A clean-shaven, middle-aged man with jet-black hair nicely combed to the side. He was wearing a rusty-green shirt with beige slacks, and looked smart enough for his investment banker profession. Outside his office, beyond the parking lot, the traffic looked mellow for a Friday afternoon, and he had no business to take care of, except one.