chapter 2[title: To be healed, to be corrupted.]/
So soft.
Gentle feelings of lead in my bones held my alien body to the hospital bed.
When did I get to the hospital? I opened my eyes slowly to observe the sterile white ceiling, which swam with a riot of sparkling motes, which I knew were not real but wished to touch, to hold.
My forelegs yanked to a stop as they reached the end of their short chains, a clang echoing through the room and causing the colors in the corners of my eyes to scatter and dissipate. I felt so clear, clear minded enough to question my state at the very least.
“Can you hear me?”
I noticed hands waving in front of my face, and cringed away before realizing a doctor stood at my bedside, his companion a bone thin IV rack, which remained thankfully silent.
“I can hear you, yes.” I whispered, the specks of ether dancing across my vision again, with each word.
“Good, good. Can you tell me your name?” He asked the question gently, so softly, like the blanket laid over me and like the drugs pumping through my veins.
They spoke that way to calm me, to offer a safe and hospitable environment, and to subliminally convince me to think of them as my friends. The lolli in the dentist’s office is a ruse structured to make children think that they have done the right thing, despite the pain and suffering and the tiny beings they slip in your teeth when you are unconscious, who watch. They just watch. It is almost comforting. Their presence at every hour, they could almost be called friends.
“My name is Faith Tamera.” My unfamiliar voice rasped, a dry and rasping throat lending the tone a sobbing and cracking quality. I certainly wasn’t crying. That would be absurd.
“Thank you, Faith.” He handed a clipboard to the IV rack, or someone who had hidden cleverly behind it, and the hidden human left. This left me alone with this strange doctor who spoke in pleasing tones yet held me in shackles, sweet drugs subduing me and dulling the parts of my mind that weren’t mine.
“We found you like this, do you remember anything about becoming a pony?” His voice was just as kind, but I could feel it, the knowledge, the secret message.
He knows.
No, the voice was wrong. The voice wasn’t me. I fought it, I nodded.
“I remember waking up, I was scared... I hurt myself, bits and pieces...” I cobbled the sentence together out of fragmented thoughts. I wondered for a moment just how powerful of a sedative they must have used to keep the creatures who watch so very eerily quiet.
“You did, it seems like your injuries were accidental, however you were acting erratic when you were brought in, do you have any psychological problems? It’s perfectly alright if you do.” The calming voice just bothered me then, at odd with the words hidden within. It was not okay, my problems destroyed my family’s life, and this was just a new saga in a chain of sad records in some spy agency monitoring database.
I cracked open my eyes and peered at him before replying, watching his face shift from concern to something akin to pity.
“Olanzapine, twenty milligrams per day. Thioridazine, fifty milligrams per day. Sinequan, one hundred and fifty milligrams per day. Zyprexia...” I paused, wondering about the way the word seemed to pop and crackle as I said it, the feel of the word staying in my mouth like the crunch of cereal. “... Ten milligrams per day. There are more, but I don’t remember the names.”
I relaxed into the pillows, as I felt my tail twitch involuntarily against the sheets. It was an odd feeling, and one that I felt should concern me more than it did, but not an unpleasant one. How much more like an animal I have become, and how ordinary it feels.
“...onfirm dosage immediately, we need to contact the state department and try to figure out if her new body is capable of processing the drugs in the same manner, or if we can condense the list somehow. This is absurd, according to her chart she has all these drugs for depression and paranoia, but the details are missing... Is she conscious again?”
I could feel my new ears swiveling as though on rusty hinges towards the voices, while keeping in mind that time must have passed, though I could not remember going to sleep, or being knocked out.
“Ms. Tamera?” The voice was so cold, so detached. This one didn’t care about me. She wanted me dead. She was the one that knew, the one that would find out.
“Ms. Tamera is dead, demon!” I shouted, I lied, the chains grinding against each other as I fought wildly to attack her, to break the nearby window and leap from it, dropping seven stories to the awning below, which I would break through and die upon impact. They would hold a funeral for me under the wrong name, at the wrong time of day, and my body would be burned by those heathens, hell itself visiting upon me for my crimes.
The moment I heard the nurse’s yelp of fright and saw her run out of the room sobbing, I knew I had made a mistake. I fell limp again, my mind reeling with confusion and lies.
“Who are you then?” The kind man’s voice asked me, his concerned face swimming into view.
“I am my own demise.” I whispered, wanting desperately for him to understand, to feel my fear and my struggle, despite the fact that I could feel my own feelings dulling, slipping away already. How calm I feel now.
“Get some rest, we will begin your treatment in the morning, until then you need to recover.” He carefully checked the IV, and my restraints, before smiling down on me in a fatherly fashion.
“The worst is over.”
/chapter 2