The Masochist

I sat resignedly at the farthest corner of my room while waiting for someone to come save me from the darkness that had, on a bitter twist of fate, encompassed me and my temperamental thoughts. I was forced to refrain from listening to my usually-silent conscience which was corrupted with memories of disdain. I was... crazy... drowned in fits of hardships and lost liberty... There was no way I could escape.

I stared into the wide distance between my current position and the door -- the only way out of this cellar and the one entrance to a new world.  But the world was a scary place... a scary place indeed. Had it not been so frightening then I wouldn't be curled up in this personal space of mine. The yellowish light beneath the door had my attention for a moment because of the black circles moving back and forth against it. I gazed at the light blankly, waiting for the owner of that shadow to march inside and offer me his or her hand so that I could finally leave this place.

Then the door finally opened, and they came in one by one; the people in white coats. I tried to move backwards but I couldn't considering that I had myself huddled in that little corner. One person was holding a syringe, and although I couldn't make out his or her face, I could see the syringe holding in a reddish liquid of some sort. I knew right away that it wasn't medicine...

"Stay still," the person -- whom I now realized was a "she"-- commanded as her hand wrapped around my left wrist. I immediately tried to pry myself away from her hold, but another assistant took me by surprise and held me down by my shoulders. I couldn't move.

The lady lowered the syringe so that the needle touched my porcelain skin. The object gleamed against the light, and I couldn't look away as the liquid was injected into me intravenously. I started getting dizzy... then drowsy... The last thing I felt before blacking out was a pair of lithe arms carrying me out of the door... away from my small sanctuary...
--
The crew all watched their guinea pig as a lady set her down in a small bath tub filled to the brim with needles inside an observation room and left her there to wake up. Moments later, her wide cerulean eyes blinked open ever so slowly, basking themselves in the white light. Some of the needles had managed to tear through her clothes pierce her skin but she didn't react. In fact, she smiled as if she couldn't feel the pain. And so they decided to challenge her more...

They helped her out of the tub-- her feet sinking deep into the bed of needles -- and wheeled her into a small ward.

There, they strapped her to her bed with a pair of black, leather buckles. One stretched across her torso while the other stretched across her feet. They were surprised when she didn't struggle. They fell silent for a moment, wondering why she's being submissive when she'd always show signs of resistance in their previous experiments.

The sudden quietness was broken when a short, stubby man burst into the room, carrying a box filled with so-called utensils -- knives of all kinds, screw drivers of all shapes, blades of all sizes, and a scalpel.

She smiled again upon seeing these instruments. Her face was paling, but her widening grin said otherwise.  The short man walked to her side and pointed a screwdriver to her eyes to test her and was rather appalled when she didn't blink. He gave her a warning smirk and stalked away from the ward so that the rest could go on with their work.

The bed's white sheet was already painted with droplets of blood due to the needles earlier, but none of them paid heed to the stains. They fixed their attention on the girl, still waiting for her to show at least a brief signal of hesitation, but she gave none.

A female finally stepped forward with as much courage as she needed and said, "Tell me if it hurts, okay?"

Her listener didn't speak, and she passed this off as an approval. She carefully picked up the scalpel and pointed it at the girl's right knee. From there, she lifted up the hem of the girl's dress folded it so that it reached mid-thigh because it was currently in the way of her work. She pressed the scalpel on the girl's tender skin and slowly began cutting diagonally. She lifted the excess skin and began to cut deeper, digging into the girl's insides until a bone was visible.

"Feel anything?" she asked. The response was a shake of the head.

The female pulled back and allowed her friend to take over. This one was a male who looked a lot braver than her. He took a screw driver and began boring a hole into the visible bone. The girl winced a bit but chuckled in the end, saying "Don't mind me... It doesn't hurt a bit..."

The others gave her a look of disgust as they watched their accomplice's next move. He took a hand-sized blade and began to cut vertically and skinned her off so that the bones of her lower foot were revealed.  He cut off the lower buckle since it was only obstructing him before he proceeded in shaving away the visible nerves and tissues till there was nothing left but the white matter he was looking for. The girl still gave off no sign of pain or hurt.

Another female, a brunette, couldn't take what was going on and pushed through two of her co-crew members while shouting, "Stop it! This is going way too far, Vince! Nobody asked you to peel her from inside-out!"

"I'm just doing what my mind tells me... Besides, the boss told us to test how much pain the drug would kill," The man, Vince, retorted matter-of-factly. "So stand back and watch."

He took out a butcher's knife and began chopping her left foot into seven, equal parts. Then he waited for the girl's response. "Well?"

"I don't... feel anything," she said, trying to press back a sob. "Why can't I feel anything?!"

"It's the drug, hon... It's helping you ease the pain," The brunette explained, caressing the girl's cheek while clutching a knife in her hand.

"Please... I just want to feel the pain... so that everything would be over," The girl stated, forcing tears to come out of her eyes. "I want to die... I want to die... I want to--"

The brunette didn't let the helpless girl speak further. Instead, she raised the knife and began stabbing the girl at random places -- on her head, her throat, her stomach... her hands. Soon after that, the girl finally felt a surge of pain from her upper body and began coughing out blood... "It hurts... Make it stop..."

She continued coughing until she finally forced out her still-beating heart. The others watched as she cupped the object -- the only thing that truly belonged to her -- and ran her fingers over it before laying back down, her dull eyes staring blankly into the white light above her.