Onew’s mind was like a never ending, ticking clock; the cycle never broke. When his fever pitched dramatically he thought solely of the boy who’d roomed with him. When the worker came in and changed the needle in his hand to the other side because of infection around the area where they’d pierced his skin his mind remained glued to the spot that had once housed a bed concealed by a curtain. When his manmade opening tore and blood pooled around his thighs he thought only of that face, chubby in the cheeks and thin in the eyes like most Asians that had talked to him through the worst times and listened just as intently during his. That face hosting terror and innocence…
There was a persistent itch of curiosity annoying him through all the check up and nonstop heckling of the workers. Where was he now? Back in his room most likely struggling to cope with the extra weight piled onto his abdomen. When TaeMin had left he had significantly grown since their first meeting. He could only imagine how big he was now… Or maybe he hadn’t grown at all. The clock may have been ticking in his head, but it did nothing but tick – tick tock, tick tock – around an empty face.
Wherever he was it was guaranteed that he was in pain. Onew knew all the downsides of the pregnancies. The nausea, laboured breathing from the organs crushing down on his lungs, the pestering cramps, the feeling of being constipated all the time and then the chronic diarrhea that sometimes came out of nowhere.
Negative. That was one word of many to describe the symptoms they had to cope with on a daily basis. And there was never the added perk of being able to hold that child at the end of the run through hell.
TaeMin was so young, too… There was life waiting to be lived in him still; he didn’t even look old enough to be out of school yet.
“We lost another one.” The growling voice forced Onew to quit thinking of his long removed roommate and look at the man who’d once been his. “These boys are so pathetic! They can’t even carry a child full term! I should get new ones. The lawyer got that damn detective to leave us alone anyway. Bloody git thought he could convict me of kidnapping. That Choi family of his can cry from their wallets for all I care.” Dr. Park shed his lab coat onto the chair he’d long ago ordered to be kept by bed. To sit down himself would degrade his position to a level he would never allow himself to sink to, though, so he paced to the IV instead to check its standings.
It was enough to temporarily relieve the stress on Onew’s mind for a moment only to be replaced by a hate. His tolerance for the feelings of others was as repulsive as someone eating road kill. He was distraught over the fact that he had once shared a mutual passion with this man. Every part of him wanted to scream the truths of his hypocrisy and sadistic behaviors, but he simply couldn’t… Instead he gave in to the one thing that hadn’t left him since he’d actually physically gone.
“What happened to him?” he rasped.
Dr. Park’s shoulders popped up in a shrug. “I couldn’t get rid of him; he’s only got one strike on his record. Hush now, you should be resting so that infection can go and we can get you fertilized… I’ve tried to pull out as much of my sperm for you as possible…”
It might have been the demanding tone he’d used when addressing him or the way he spoke so casually about his sick experiment but something triggered defiance in Onew. The words flew out of his mouth before he could swallow them and how he wished he had…
“Not him… The boy who transferred out of the room…” A sharp bolt of pain in his left lung caused the last word to disappear in a gasp but the message had been crossed by the first half. A dangerous message it was for Dr. Park stopped measuring the drugs he had planned on administering and to Onew and glared at him over his glasses. Intimidation was his best asset after all and he used it to his advantage; his gaze unwavering as he cast his disapproving look to the carrier.
“What?” he asked voice low in comparison to the near concerned tone he’d harboured earlier. The needle and vial was slowly slid back into place on the tray. One step, two steps closer now. “Did you talk to that boy?” By now Onew knew he had jumped into the hell fire and that his hand was duck taped to the Devil’s tail. There was no possible way to deny his affiliation with the young boy without appearing suspicious and he couldn’t confirm it either because that would bring on a harsher punishment. He would have to prepare himself for a brutal verbal lashing now…
From the years he’d spent with the doctor, Onew knew that he liked to keep that edge of mystery to him so all his actions could be sporadic and enforced by their instantaneity, but he was really an open book. During those times when he was completely devoid of any inspiration in life Onew compiled a list of every insult Dr. park had dished out, every form of punishment, every hint that built him up into one of his feuds so that he could be ready if the man ever turned on him. Which he had several times already. Between work and the occasional glimpses of love he offered he was usually bitter towards him. The list mixed with Dr. Park’s standard attitude is what allowed Onew the ability to guess the scene in advance.
“Why are you thinking about that pathetic boy?! Don’t you care at all about recovering? After all the time I’ve devoted to you! All the care I put into this project you’re still only going to think about yourself?” The vial smashed violently onto the floor, spilling antibiotic all over. The needle followed suit but survived the impact with only a few noticeable dents. Typical, typical. “Did you talk to him? You bloody bastard! I’m doing this for us! For us damn it!” Trays went up in flight. The IV tube was yanked from his hand as the tray used it as a slingshot. “Why don’t you care about our family?!”
“I-I-I wanted… Him… Just as much as you did… But we can’t control…”
Dr. Park reeled on Onew, his eyes ablaze with a fury induced by the pain of losing a loved one. With his hands shaking violently he removed his glasses from his face, letting them dangle in one hand. Fumes could be seen steaming out of his ears. Medusa herself couldn’t match the ugly contorting his face. “No. We can control these things and we couldhave stopped this! If I had started this earlier we could have had our baby boy in our hands already! He would have been walking and talking and living with us if we had done this sooner!” he screeched.
“You can’t control everything…” Onew whispered. Tears blurred his vision as he lost himself in the fantasies of the past. There was no way that this psychotic experiment could make up for the loss of the son they’d never gotten to raise. It couldn’t make up for the crashing hopes of every being able to start a family or watch their child grow up vanishing from before their very eyes. None of this would ever rectify the loss of their family.
“I can and I am! We’ve got a family now!” Dr. Park continued to ramble.
The words were on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to tell him that this wasn’t a family; it was the furthest thing from a family.
“If we had done this before Onew, we could have had our family like we wanted,” the doctor said in a low voice. “We can’t trust anyone but ourselves…”
But he was. He’d gone beyond the two of them and involved innocent boys, terrorized their bodies and minds, hurt their families… This wasn’t a two person project any longer. His trust was instilled in the carriers and donors that he abused daily. TaeMin’s teary eyes as he worked through a painful kink in his back floated to mind and the little whines that came out of him every time things got particularly painful. One of the many beings hurt in this tangled web being weaved.
“Stop it…” Onew murmured. The haze of his previous dreamlike state came back to cloak him, leaving him hopeless as he suspended outside his ebbing body and watched himself speak the words that would unleash the heat of the hell fires.
“Stop what?” Dr. Park hissed.
Onew heaved in a breath, rasping out on the exhale, “Stop this whole thing…”
The poison from the words spoken and unspoken had already stung him but the first time the fist actually struck him it hurt more than every insult that had been launched at him. It wasn’t the actual hit that hurt all that much more as it was the shards of his life shattering around him that affected him deeply. The cleft in Onew’s heart where he was still clinging to that once sweet Dr. Park cracked and split and divided his chest cavity into two pieces, leaving the fissures interlaced with it to ruin the places it hadn’t reached. Each blow accompanied by a remark of betrayal. Even suspended outside of his body Onew could feel the pinch as the knuckles rubbed against his skin. There was a continuous throb on the spots where the clipboard dug in and the IV was spurting outrageous amounts of medication into his face now that its bag had been torn. A stitch in Onew’s side pounded against his withering muscles. Something warm was seeping through his pants and onto the sheets, followed by a wetter sensation gushing between his legs, excreting all the urine that he’d stashed in his bladder.
Jostling in his head… Bulging from his elbow… Heaving in his chest…
A tornado kept locked around his throat, stealing his oxygen and choking him. Choking. Suffocating the life out of him… Car pieces ticking off chunks of his skin… There’s no place like home… Cows crying as they were carried on in the pandemonium of the beating.
Bam. How could he think like this? Boom. If he had ever cared for him then he would support him through everything. Smash. These were their children. Bang. He was doing this for them. Crash. How could he be so ungrateful?
Hovering just outside the scene, watching his body get abused, watching it roll in his own filth and swallowing his tears – he had no answer to the questions.
Standing beside his body in a detached state of mind where he watched his life fall to shambles. What would it take to mend the pieces back together?
What would it take to bring back those kisses? How hard would he have to work to get that heart stopping thrill pumping again? Would there ever be butterflies in his stomach again when he saw his face?
Would there be any way to bring a real, painless smile back to TaeMin’s face?