When he woke, Left Man was in a hospital room, but an unusually darkly lit one.
He noted his overall discomfort and inability to move, as well as the IV bags to his right side.
A door opened, and inside stepped the most beautiful Left Man had ever seen, with flawless skin, long black hair, and a little black dress that perfectly highlighted her athletic figure.
"Hello," she said, greeting him by his real name, still long forgotten.
"Do not fear," she said. "You're aboard our submarine, hidden deep, deep in the Atlantic. We've tended to your wounds, and you're going to be just fine."
She then leaned in close to him, showing a generous amount of cleavage. In the presence of such cleavage, Left Man was almost speechless, but he did notice two men behind her, dressed in concealing red robes.
"I am Madame Corruption," the woman said. "Don't let the name upset you. Think of it as a combination of irony and flamboyance."
"Who?" was all Left Man managed to say.
"We are the Temple. Now tell me, what do you want?"
He stared up at the ceiling and inhaled deeply. "The job. I just want to do the job."
Corruption nodded. "Welcome."
In the days that followed, Left Man went through a number of surgeries and procedures. The first had all his teeth removed and replaced with harder-than-steel plastic alloy teeth. Then came the burning, in which every inch of his flesh was burned beyond recognition, with the pain especially strong on his face and fingertips. When it was done, his skin was a wrinkled mess – twisted, knotted and barely recognizable as human flesh, and even less recognizable from the face he once knew.
After that came more advanced treatments, with lasers burning into his retinas to make them to things unlike human eyes. Then his tongue, to make his personal tongue-print unreadable. Tears streamed down his newly reconstructed eyes, as the lasers burned away layer after layer of taste buds.
"There's more," Corruption informed him when red robed guards escorted him to the submarine's medical bay a few days later. She held up a syringe filled with bright yellow liquid. "This is a DNA non-sequencer, it will make your DNA unrecognizable to any computer on Earth. You will experience pain on a cellular level for the next 90 days. Are you ready?"
"Whatever it takes," Left Man said.
"Good soldier," Corruption said.
Ninety days later, Left Man had suffered the rewiring of his own DNA, Corruption approached him with one final test.
This time, she held a syringe of clear, water-like liquid. "This will eliminate your memories. Your name, your family, your high school prom, absolutely everything. Are you ready?"
It was all a show, Left Man knew. If he said no now, they'd either kill him or wipe his mind anyway. "It's the job," he said.
"You're beautiful," Corruption said.
He closed his eyes, felt the needle penetrate his misshapen skin, and all former loyalties went away.
"Thank God for the Temple," he said.
Corruption put a finger to his lips. "No. All praise to the Temple."
He repeated, "All praise to the Temple."
They gave him a few days to recover, after which he learned Corruption had gone, left for another assignment. The other Temple workers dressed Left Man in his red Temple robes, never once questioning his loyalty.
For the first time in weeks, we was allowed outside of the submarine's medical bay and his small bedroom, down a long hallway and until arriving at a large laboratory and engineering room, with mechanical equipment all around him and a huge metal tube in the center of the room. Everyone else in the room, everyone else in the room wore faceless red hoods, just as he did.
"Today you learn what becomes of the sinners," a fellow red-masked man said.
Left Man nodded yes, and was led forward to the large metal tube in the center of the room. The other Temple workers pulled his hood away from his head, exposing his burned hairless head.
Then the head Temple worker grabbed Left Man and pushed him toward the giant pipe in the center of the room, a glass-plastic porthole slid open, allowing Left Man to press his bare face through. The Temple worker and his associates held Left Man's body in place and his face pressed into the porthole.
"One second," he heard the Temple worker say. "That's all he needs."
In that one second, Left Man felt the skin all over his face first burn, and the ripped off him. He fell back, with the other Temple workers sealing the opening behind him.
"My face," he managed to sway, as blood fell all over the front of him.
"It's not your face anymore," the Temple worker said, his voice slightly muffled behind his red hood. "It belongs to the Temple."
"What you just experienced," a Temple worker said to Left Man, while removing his face bandages, "was a miniature sun, with all the gravity and heat of a regular sun. That's what ripped your face off."
"Why?" Left Man managed to ask.
"You had to feel it for yourself. You had to feel what will happen to the sinners of the world."
Left Man collapsed, and the men lifted him and carried him to the medical bay.
"Well?" the Temple worker asked.
"All praise to the Temple," Left Man said.
# # # #
Next: No one understands you.