White Horror

I

The dormant sunlight blared on. A flash blinded my mortal eyes as my scream pierced the air. Flailing and thrashing as they held me still. My throat yearning to reach out and seek help. Help. Help? But from whom? From what? They speak of their salvation being omnipresent. How can I escape that which was considered to save me?

Save me.

The only words that surge through my mind. But they don't come out of my mouth, at least not in the way I'd want them to. My ability to form words using my voice has been numbed by the agony I feel behind my temples. Concentrating at a certain point inside my head that is all too real to locate. It comes in waves. I feel the scorching heat spreading from the proximity of my eyes to my skin.

My tears scorch my pallid skin as they drag themselves down, boiling, executioners marking their territory. Dissecting the entirety of my face into three asymmetric halves. I wish I could tell them to stop. My vocal chords thrum and threatens to rip apart as they fatigue themselves in trying so. In vain.

Stop!

My inner victim trying to rebel. But his screams disintegrate into high shrill screech. Gargles, emerge in cloak of convoluted words. My tongue, trying to escape the connection to my body, refuses to form words of my plight. As if under the control of a garrote wire. Why is this necessary? Why is such pain necessary?

Pain.

The shackles on my wrists and ankles, tightening their grip every second of my resistance, inflicting pain. The sun that blinds me eternally in the name of cure, inflicting pain. The needles beneath the layers of my skin, pouring their venom of life, inflicting pain. Life. Is this what life is? Burning, searing, torment through my veins? Then take it away. Don't pour this life into me. Grant me what isn't life. What I can withstand. What I can speak. What I can see.

I don't want such cure!

Take it away!!

My lungs forfeit their use. My screech has become silent. The air I can't breathe anymore rushes in. With every gasp, I inhale flame. Yet the feeling is recessed by the blaze that burns within my brain, igniting my neurons. Sending signals of retreat from this war on me. Then again. War? No this isn't war. I can't fight back. I can't plea that I've never harmed them. I can't even shout back.

I can only keep looking. What I see is massacre. White, hot, undiminished massacre. Of my body. Of my mind. Of me. My body thrashes against vacuum. Against nothingness. My fists firm; the nails dig deeper, scraping the skin off my palms. Attempting to release some pain outside of my body. As if the energy surging within me would allow me to suffer less.

If only.

If only I could afford less. If only I could afford a chance at war. If only I could afford death. Flames rush back in, filling my diaphragm, making my ribs shriek. My back heaves my chest forward in an attempt to break apart and let my heart escape. Beating violently through my veins. Flooding them with each stroke, convoluted by their venom of life that feels like acid burning through. I can even hear them. Trying to break through this cage of bones compounded by my flesh.

My lungs burn ablaze once more and I can't get away from this onslaught. My eyes scream as my sight loses the ability to focus. Blurring my vision into the sun. Into the fire. They can't afford to look away. Shackles over my eyes don't allow me. They hold back my whole head with their legion of contraptions. Yet my eyelids dare to rip through the hooks. Unable to sway their hold, they tear through their own tissues and flesh and something I don't quite understand. The feeling is uncommon. They fall like tears, dropping from the corners of a face that is no longer pale. Retracing the ones that lead before. They don't burn like their predecessor. Rather worse, intensified thrice folds. Boiling magma flows down ravaging the dissections of my face. They're thicker, slower, savoring every crater and hill of my numbed mouth. My tongue tastes salty when they overflow the boundary and stream in. Choking me with the burning magma. I drown in the singeing warmth of it all. As my lungs blaze their final, I hear their voice from the corner of my ear.

"Subject 666-D56, showing heart failure. Minimal response from the Antidote. Subject is going into cardiac arrest. Orders, Sir?!"

"The devil yet lives." A hint of disappointment emerges within a bold voice. "Abort! Abort program!" commands the voice. "Close the God-damned roof already!"

As my skin crisps away, I hear a sudden mechanical noise, above me, retracting. I could feel the hooks over my eyes being taken out. I feel every pull even though my eyelids refuse to close on instinct, as does my body in responding to the pain. A sudden scour of hands ensue all over my body. My vision goes black finally and I can only smell my own charred flesh as I blank out.
- - - - -