Please don’t be disappointed. Please don’t be disappointed. Please. Please. Please.
The young boy pleaded repeatedly in his head, the words having become his mantra over the time he’d been kept cooped up in this atrocious place. His feet scuffed along the floor tiredly, the assistant he was with doing very little in helping him keep his legs underneath him. He could care less, though, as he knew there was much worse awaiting him beyond the narrow space between the two blank walls he was ambling sloppily between. The room at the end of the hall was the exact area he was dreading to enter. He woefully howled inside like a lone wolf on the top of a mountain calling out to its mates that were too far to hear his cries.
With its four walls clean of even the tiniest specks of dust and the tools in there waiting to get into action on his body – it was more than a bit daunting… The mere thought of the room was enough to send unnerving tingles pitter pattering up each disk on the boy’s spine.
“Come on now,” the worker “steadying” him coaxed in a steely voice dripping with impatience.
So much for hospitality, the boy thought bitterly. Of course, he’d never witnessed any glimpses of friendliness since arriving to the institution.
The steel door sealing the examination room came into sight and the young boy literally began to tremble in the lose pants adorning his frail figure. Each one of his muscles contracted every few milliseconds until he was left a mess of quaking bones barely able to place one foot in front of the other. His instincts screamed at him to run in the opposite direction – make a break for it; fight or flight – but he had neither the energy nor the courage to do that.
Keeping a firm hold on his arm, the employee nudged the door open.
Whole staffs of workers were waiting with their clipboards and medical instruments in hand. Lab coats dressed their bodies to give them a professional look since the coat really served no other purpose. Maybe it was one of their tools for intimidation… God knew they still wouldn’t need them if that was the case, though, as just the sight of them huddled together as they were was enough to send anyone trapped in here into a frenzy.
A steel table took up most of the space in the middle of the room. Though it was the centerpiece to the room there was still much space left to navigate around it.
The young boy was forced to move into the midst of the lulling activity. A woman familiar to him – one he called the she-devil - stepped forward to aid her co-worker in placing him on the cold, flat table. It took all he had left in the boy to just hoist his leg up onto the table. Relief flooded him when he was able to lie down on his back and take the pressure off of his legs. It was a short lived moment however, as the team of doctors closed in on him to probe at his sore body with stethoscopes and that God awful blue gel amongst many other objects he wasn’t able to pinpoint the name of.
“Is there any activity?” The question came from Dr. Park, the only one that the boy knew by name. Usually he never dropped in on examinations as small and minor as these, but the lack of progress he had been experiencing had piqued the doctor’s interest it seemed.
Standing at six feet tall, he was as intimidating as he was deceitful and his presence in the room did little to soothe the boy’s nerves.
“I don’t see any signs,” the she-devil answered.
“Check inside,” Dr. Park demanded.
Two workers sidled over, grabbing a leg each. Their clammy palms provided an unwanted shock to the boy’s smooth legs. His muscles (or what was left of them) clenched in their grip as he pictured what was to come next. It felt like fire between his legs as they carelessly pushed aside his natural genitals and used some unknown instrument to hold him open. The area was still a sensitive one, tender and red from being examined so much, despite having been harboured on his body for quite some time. The area caused him constant pain as he had not been born with such an abstract thing. One could call it an artificial hole, connecting those foreign organs inside of him to the outdoors, or one could simply call it an abomination.
His artificial hole was split open, causing a moan of pain to whimper out of the boy. All his cries were ignored as a finger groped the sore flesh around his nether regions and further still. They reached into the wet area, taking swabs with their Q-tips and feeling for something or another that the boy couldn’t fathom.
With his eyes focused on the ceiling, the young boy counted to ten. When he reached the final digit he started up again, and again still, until the touching desisted and he was left alone to sink into his body.
Pain swamped his lower half more than usual and the check up wasn’t even over yet. He could only pray for something to be growing inside of him… If there was then he could skip one of the most uncomfortable and violating steps of the whole examination.
“Anything?” inquired Dr. Park, getting impatient with the lack of responses.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
One, two, three, four, five –
“Negative.”
Every single one of the boy’s hopes crashed down into a messy pile of scorched firewood; total devastation, like a forest after falling victim to a terrible blaze. He could just picture the frown creasing Dr. Park’s face. The creases were probably embedded so far into his face that he lost another year of his life. But so used had he grown to the doctor’s disappointment that when he heard the sound of the grumbling he realized it had started in his head before turning into reality.
There was a clamour of noise from the doctor carelessly tossing aside his clipboard onto the table parallel to him.
“What are you waiting for then?” he asked. “Get the stuff ready! You milked his donor this morning, didn’t you? Get me the stuff! Maybe fresh sperm will work for once on this useless one.”
The words stabbed into the poor boy almost harder than the metal objects holding him open.
People scrambled about trying to get the job done. Cupboards were opened and closed; the door to the donor cups was slammed as someone bustled inside the refrigerated area to prepare the required dose. The boy on the table, with his legs up and bottom vulnerable to the adults, started hyperventilating. He made sure to keep still for if he moved even an inch he risked getting restrained again and that would do nothing but feed the fear already leeching off of him.
“Hurry up!” Dr. Park hollered. There was the sound of a hand slamming down hard onto a metal surface, making everyone in the room flinch.
Tears trickled out of the corners of the boy’s eyes, clinging to his eyelashes before they coursed down his protruding cheek bones. It was coming… That damn awful moment when –
It seared down the artificial opening and throughout his whole body. Uncomfortable as always; that syringe wedged between the lips that barely curtained the entrance of the two leading walls. His eyes disappeared behind his crinkled eyelids that were squeezing shut tighter and tighter with each passing second.
A hand began stroking his hair, making the small boy open his eyes. Dr. Park was staring down at him, a morbid happiness glinting in his cruel eyes.
“Maybe this time, Riley,” he whispered, twirling a lock of the boy’s sweaty hair around his index finger.
Riley, exhausted as he was, could do nothing but wait it out. He felt the syringe slip out of him, knowing he would have to stay with his legs up for a while more in order to assure that all the liquids had flowed down to his implanted uterus.
Relief would only come to him when he was back in the solitary confinement of his bland, empty room.
Anywhere but here… Just anywhere but here.