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There's a hand clawing at the back of my collar when I try to step forward. Ray had come over to stage right at the beginning of the interlude. I can see him talking to Frank. Or, trying to, at least. Frank has become less and less responsive each week. He's just stared out at the crowd with dead eyes during the last few shows. It hasn't stopped me from trying to get through to him, though. He's the only one I have any hope of talking to during the set without drawing too much attention. I've been trying to break through to him. I assume that's why I'm being stopped from joining them now. When I look behind me I can see the clerk staring at me. I know instantly that he knows what I've done.
I don't know where we were last week but something snapped in my mind. I ran, same as always, but I didn't fight the man waiting for me in the wings. I let them slip the bag over my head and the cuffs around my wrist. It was the first time I was ever placed in the same transport truck as anyone else. While conscious, at least. I have no idea how they typically move me once I'm knocked out, but I was able to stare at Frank during the ride. I hadn't even planned on saying anything. Not at first. But he looked like a corpse and I'm tired of looking at corpses. "Do you think you could fight the soldiers if I told you when they were coming?" I had asked. I've realized that I can see them organizing the kidnapping in the wings if I watch close enough. There's no mic-stand tying me down to a particular spot so I've gotten good at letting my eyes and feet wander. Frank doesn't nod. I had honestly assumed no one had heard me.
Now, though, with the clerk's hand wrapped tight around the collar of my jacket I know that I hadn't gone completely unnoticed. "There's nothing you can do to stop this," he whispers before shoving me forward into the lights. Gerard stands back up and the brief interlude ends. Ray goes back to his spot stage right. The show goes on. Teenagers. Disenchanted. Famous Last Words. The End.
I can see the soldiers lining up. Two for me, one for Ray, one for Frank. The clerk is standing next to them and he's staring straight at me. It doesn't stop me. I scream at Frank and he doesn't even turn. No one notices. He keeps playing until there's a bag shoved over his head and I'm being chased away into the wings. Again.
The same man is there to restrain me but he's not alone this time. The clerk is there with a woman I've never seen backstage. She's kind of pretty. Long dark hair, black glasses, tall. My arms are pinned to my sides roughly and the guard nods for her to come closer. "It's nice to finally see you awake, Michael. I believe you and I are the only ones who haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet." She's close enough that I can read off the clipboard she's holding. It's some kind of file. My name at the top, blood type, height, weight, and medical history.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Doctor Grace Thompkins with the Ministry of Complimentary Reconditioning" she says with a too-wide smile that doesn't reach her unnervingly gray eyes. "I hear that you're having trouble keeping quiet on and off stage. Would you agree with that assessment?"
"I'm not agreeing to anything," I hiss. The hands holding my arms down tighten painfully. She gets close enough to place her hand on my chin and move my head side to side. "Don't touch me!" She moves quickly to hold my mouth shut with strength I didn't realize she had. One finger traces along the corner of my lip with a sharp nail.
When she finally takes a step back she looks back at the clerk. "I can't do anything about him here, I'm afraid. If you could have him brought to my OR, though, I could hopefully get something done by midnight."
The man checks his watch before glancing up at me. "I can have him on the table in two hours," he says. "Would you prefer conscious or unconscious?"
"Conscious, please. Studies have shown that lessons tend to stick better if the person in question is able to realize the full extend of their punishment."
The guard holding me down must get the memo because I'm being handcuffed before I have time to process what she's just said. They shove me into my own transport car this time. It takes off down the street the second the doors are barred shut from the outside.
I'm thrown against the wall when it eventually shutters to a stop. There's someone there to drag me out before I can manage to steady myself. They use the chain on the handcuffs to pull me up onto my feet and walk me through unlabeled double doors.
I recognize the gray brick walls of the prison instantly, but it's not a hallway I've ever seen before. There are metal doors with card readers lining both walls and some of the rooms have windows that look into medical operating rooms. A few people turn to stare as I'm walked past. Only one of the rooms has a patient in it.
Their body is laying limp on top of the steel operating table with a small cluster of surgeons surrounding them. It's all arranged perfectly to allow me to see what they're doing. The person's chest is held open with clamps, their face covered by a thin white sheet. I'm almost certain I can see their heart under bloody white ribs. There are wires hanging off every exposed inch of skin, all of them leading back into some kind of monitor that's being kept off to the side. Flatlined. The guards push me away before I can see anything else. One of them scans a card and the door across the hall opens up. Doctor Thompkins is already waiting for me inside. I could have sworn I saw her standing over the other patient.
This room looks almost identical to the three other operating rooms I walked past. One of the guards uncuffs my hands and the other shoves me down onto the operating table and quickly begins to strap me down to it. Brown leather straps wrap around my wrists, ankles, chest, and neck before the two men are leaving silently. The doctor wheels a stool next to my head and pulls a tray of tools up beside her. I can't see above the lip of the tray with my neck being held down to the table. She grabs a small square of paper and rips it open to reveal an alcohol wipe.
"What are you doing?" I try to ask, but she doesn't respond. She wipes at a spot of skin just under the sleeve of my jacket silently. "Stop it!" I can't pull my hand out of the restraints no matter how hard I try. "Hey! Stop!" She grabs a small syringe with a bright red label on it. She's terribly quick to stab it into a vein on the inside of my wrist. "No! No! Stop!"
She doesn't say anything in response until whatever had been in the syringe starts to really kick in. It gets harder and harder to move, like my limbs are being weighed down by something, until I'm eventually just laying there limp. I can't help but to think about the body in the room across from mine. I'm fully expecting my mind to shut off at any moment. I'm going to fall asleep here and wake up somewhere else and I'll never be able to know for sure what they did to me.
But the exhaustion never comes.
The doctor finally looks me in the eyes. "Isn't that much better, Michael? Can you feel this?" She drags a gloved finger across my cheek. I can feel it but I can't move to say anything. "Oh, well. I'll just have to assume you can." She smiles again, the same, too-wide, too-toothy leer. She tears open another alcohol swab and I can taste the ethanol when she starts rubbing it against my lips. She pulls my jaw open roughly to wipe down the inside of my mouth too before tossing the wipe into a trashcan and returning to the metal tray. It takes a while for her to hold up a thick needle with a braided red cord threaded through one end. Everything clicks and I'm sure I would be sick if I could move any part of my body. I must whimper or something because she looks down at me like with pity in her dead gray eyes. "You should've known his Immortality does not require you to be able to talk," she says. "It's not one of your privileges, I'm afraid."
I'm able to close my eyes when she leans over me but it does nothing to help. She holds the needles against the inside of my right cheek for a second before finally pushing it through. I can feel every inch of the rough thread as she pulls it through the hole she's made in my mouth. When the knot finally slides against the wound she tugs the string once, twice to ensure it's tight. I want to scream. She pushes the needle back through the bottom corner of my lip and the needle hits my gums on the other side. She pulls the thread tight once again before shoving it through my top lip. Pull, push, tug, pull, push, tug, pull, push, tug, until she's forcing the needle through the opposite corner of my mouth. I can taste blood on my tongue. She pulls the thread tight one last time before tying another knot on the outside of my left cheek.
She's efficient. It's over faster than it should be.
My tongue moves until I can trace the thread inside my mouth. It tastes like iron and alcohol and it feels like sandpaper. I try to say something, to scream, to cry, anything, but it just comes out as an out of tune hum that echoes around the metal and concrete room.
She sprays the area with something and the thread turns salty. A saline solution, I assume. Like a lip piercing. I think I'd laugh if I could.
"You know, my original plan was to cut out your tongue," the doctor says as she begins to clean up. "I can't believe I was against this originally. This looks so much cleaner. Plus, you would've had to be fully anesthetized and that would have been so much less fun. My sisters have become far too reliant on anesthesia if you ask me. They don't realize how important pain is to the learning process. At this point they're all too focused on trying to prove their loyalty to his Immortality that they've forgotten that we we're being judged on our worth as doctors, too. We'll show them, though, won't we? I'm sure you and I are gonna win once this is all over and then I'll be able to do whatever I want to all four of you! I really do want us both to survive." She's talking like we're friends. I don't know what to do when she starts laughing hysterically. "Now you better not tell anyone I said that!"
She pushes a button and the guards return. They lift my limp body onto a gurney and don't even bother to strap me down to it. It's only as I'm being pushed down the empty halls that I start to hear a haunted sound over the repeated squeaks of the wheels. Hushed painful cries. Almost-silent whimpers that echo back endlessly. It follows me all the way to my room as I'm dumped haphazardly onto the too-thin mattress. It sounds like muffled humming, like trying to sing along with a song you've only heard once.
I think it might be coming from me.