Buried For Her

The GREAT ESCAPE

POV Subject 249

Five paces to my right, mounted crookedly against the wall beneath the flickering red emergency light, is the fire extinguisher.

I have counted the distance so many times that I see it even when my eyes are closed, even when the drugs drag me under and the room melts into shapes, even when the screaming starts again and my body is no longer fully mine. Five paces, maybe four if I lunge instead of walk, but my legs have been strapped down too long and I do not trust them to move the way I need them to, not at first, not until the blood remembers how to run.

The guard with blond hair will come in to change shifts in three minutes.

He always comes in first.

He is too comfortable with me now, too amused by the thing they have made out of me, and every time he steps into this room, he forgets that monsters are only harmless when their cages stay locked. The other guard will turn away because he is lazy, because he hates looking at me too long, because even men with guns and keys and clean uniforms feel something rotten crawl beneath their skin when they stare at me and realize I am still breathing.

Right after blond hair comes in, the doctor will follow.

The doctor with soft, dry hands and a nervous little silver pen he clicks against his clipboard when he thinks I am too unconscious to notice.

That gives me ninety seconds.

Ninety seconds between the guard opening the door and the doctor stepping into the room.

Ninety seconds before the cameras sweep back toward this corner.

Ninety seconds before the second guard realizes the first one has stopped laughing.

Ninety seconds to free myself, break through the room, reach the hall, and disappear into a building I do not fully know, with alarms above me, soldiers around me, and whatever they put inside my body still waiting for the right command.

Ninety seconds.

That is all I have.

I do not know how long I have been in this place, not really, because time does not move here in straight lines, not when there are no windows, no clocks I can trust, no sun to rise or fall against my skin, only white walls, silver tables, needles, leather straps, machines that hum like insects, and the sharp chemical smell of men who have confused science with God.

At first, I counted days.

Then I counted meals.

Then injections.

Then surgeries.

Then screams.

Then I stopped counting because numbers became useless after my mind learned how easily one hour could stretch into a lifetime if the pain was bad enough.

There were stretches where I was not awake, not asleep either, but trapped somewhere between the two, floating above my own body while strangers opened my veins, tightened restraints around my limbs, pressed wires to my skull, and whispered about dosage, tolerance, compliance, and failure like I was not a man lying beneath them, like I was not flesh, like I was only a problem they had not solved yet.

That was how it started.

I would wake up strapped down inside a machine, my arms locked apart until my shoulders burned, my legs bound so tight I could no longer feel my feet, my jaw aching from whatever they had forced between my teeth to keep me from biting through my tongue. Sometimes my chest felt like it had been split open and filled with ice. Sometimes my head rang so loudly I could not hear my own breathing. Sometimes I woke up choking on blood and did not know if it belonged to me.