Pain. Revolting and Everlasting.

When she woke, many hours had passed, but it was impossible to tell how many. She was looking out on the window, half open. The ink-blotch shadows framing it. The Oaktree rumbling in pain. She tried her arm, it flexed timidly. Her left arm was welded close to the chair. She tried moving her right arm down along the spokes of the chair’s wheel. She felt the sting of cold metal, this was good. She wasn’t numb, or cramped, at least not in this arm. If she was able to push, she would snore left and move forward hardly at all. She tried to grip the rubber frame, it sent tingles along her skin. To grip was difficult, but she managed to cup her palm and securely wrap around the rubber. Her upper arm was in pain, perhaps because she had lost so much weight in so little time. It was like a bone plastered in a thin sheet of pale blood-spattered flesh. She tried, with all her strength, to pull the wheel. It let out a rusty screech and rolled forward perhaps 1ft. A streak of pale yellow had developed where she had gripped the tyre on her palm, so she shook in some blood flow and gripped the wheel once more. In a way, she could hardly believe what she was doing. She was moving. She was taking action. Be it, a very small amount of action.

She rumbled forward a shorter distance and her thumb cramped. She had teetered slightly left, also, so she tried to reach her right arm across her lap and chair. She could technically reach the left wheel but doubted she could push it too far.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ snarled Kroll. But it was just an imagined worst-case scenario, and Felicity was good at creating those. Cutlery was rumbling a choir directly below her and no footsteps had passed in a long time, maybe it was a day off for the staff. She tried again, and the chair lumbered forward ever so slightly in what sounded like a tear across splintered wood.

‘If she hears you,’

She’ll what? The door’s locked, I’m not going anywhere. Just shut up for now, would you?

He did. She tried again on the left wheel and the chair rumbled forward slowly. Then, at the 6^th push, she was blocked. As if she had hit an invisible concrete wall, the chair was stationary. She pushed to no effect.

‘What are you trying to get out of this?’

I said shut�"

The window was so close. Her field of view was wider, she observed more of the landscape. The ground was a stream of grit and stone leading to a wide black gate. All of it was being bombarded with a constant stream of mush and sleet. Through the gate was a long road that led out and down into a valley, which led off into an expanse of fields and on the horizon was a wobbling downward mist. The puzzle of roads and dotting of trees were complex and shifted in her painful eyes like an illusion, as if she was barely strong enough to take in the short landscape. The copper coloured tiles of the roof were visible and trailed off into a clear sky, maybe she could leap out of the window. She wouldn’t die, but she’d be injured and would be forced to roll to her certain demise on the spiky driveway. Or maybe she could have a lie down on the roof, feel the refreshing beat of the icy rain and die of it soon after. The Oaktree led down and one thick branch held a rope swing, reminiscent of a dangling noose. Who might use it, Felicity would wonder much later. But here, she could think only of the empty driveway.

‘The driveway might be empty but that doesn’t mean Kroll isn’t home. On the contrary, her st�"’

Staff.

The mysterious fleet of staff on call, wandering the hallways like ghosts ready to strike. Once out of line and they would call their master, Madam Kroll. As her mind was cooking, her numbness was steadying, and her vision was settling, less and less made sense.

For example- what was stopping her chair?

She crumpled her neck back, it was painful to begin with but eased. She was tethered by a long white wire to the wall behind her, where a small white medical appliance was set. No, multiple white wires. By the contraption was a drip dangling maybe 2 feet above where Felicity’s head had been. A glucose drip, something like that. Something keeping her alive. She had the sudden, molten urge to tug and rip.

She really wants me alive.

‘Or, she really wants you to stay. Don’t get cocky.’

She tugged the wire with a weak hand and decided against pulling it out, maybe she could bring it up with Kroll on her next visit. Maybe its for her own benefit. Maybe without it she would…

Die?

‘You gotta get that mind working. Come on, you’re steadying, you’re awake. Now, think. Think good and properly and we’ll get you to that�"’

Finish line.

‘You need a set of priorities, what do you need to do?’

No. that’s not it. What do I need to know?

‘Good. What do you need to know?’

I know where I am. I need to know how many staff are on site, and their general hours. I need to know what their duties could be. I need to know what I’m needed for, I need to know Kroll’s game. I need to get back to that dream and read that note. I need to know the finish line.

‘Anything else?’

She paused for longer than she intended. You?

‘Who am I? That’s a good one, I’d love to know myself.’

You’re a voice in my head.

‘Obviously, but who? Why this voice?

What is the finish line? What is the endgame?

***

 

 

Kroll wasn’t to return for a while. It was silent in the house and the sky was darker than black, except from the haze of light carpeting the sky above Redoak. Felicity hadn’t moved the chair forward or back, she enjoyed the fresh view. She hadn’t eaten in hours, not since Kroll had been in with her orange muck, and incidentally she hadn’t s**t in what felt like days. As it was, her hygiene was below poor, and such was the least of her problems. She didn’t tend to notice the stink unless she moved. Even the smallest twitch would excrete a gust of body odour laced with the oily sting of the sweat lathered metal of the chair. Maybe that’s why Kroll hadn’t fed her, she could hardly blame her. A twitch had developed in her arms. Consistent and quick. She knew that it was the pills, the bare, ticking pain in her head remained.

The chair banged on a crevice in the floorboard, and Felicity struck its arms with both palms as hard as she could, not realising the doubling of her vision in the lather of her developing tears. She gritted her teeth and found the night to be a long, painful one. The night churned into a day, which ticked the sun across the sky and back into the horizon. The nights were long, gruelling, and her company was short. The Voice usually visited when she least expected but, but greatest required it.

She was dazing, her head was lolling on a short axis. Her eyes had crusted shut and her wrist was rapping along the leather sleeve of the chair’s arm.

‘What do you need, Felicity?’ asked the voice. It was tucked into the black cast along the left side of the room.

Need… need…

She knew, exactly and only then, that what she needed was drugs. She needed them hard, and bad. But this, she didn’t tell the Voice. It simply knew.

‘You need her. You’re gum on her f*****g shoe and walked right into her.’

Need… need…

The shadow bathing the left side of the room, just by the window, twisted. A steak of light emerged along the centre. It raised, slowly.

Are you there?

‘I’m always here.’

 

***

 

She tried to forget the figure in the corner over the many hours it lingered. She tethered her attention away from it. But it was always there. Waiting, watching.                                                     She managed to guide her eyes. She fixed her concentration on the Oaktree, where a small owl had landed. Rain was light and tossed up the window consistently as the moon ticked up across the sky. She wondered what day it was. And then, even worse, how many days had passed.

                Weeks? No, it only felt like weeks. She would have died by now, she gave herself 5 days. 5 long days. Or was it? Were days the product of man’s invention, the separation of light and dark, the schedule of consciousness? Days meant nothing to her, just as nights did. As far as her own dwindling, fantastical logic was concerned, she had been in this room for a day. She had woken up with breakfast:

                ‘She’ll take four, Harold, then leave with the door closed.’

                Then lunch was rather late, but she slept right through to it.

                ‘Be a good girl for me and open wide, might want to pich your nose,’

                And dinner was…

                Felicity hadn’t had dinner. She hadn’t eaten in at least 4 days. The numbness, the shaking constant screams of pain, it all overlapped. The clawing, primal desire for drugs. She needed them hard and bad.

                And then there was the person in the room with her. Deftly woven into the rough fabric of the shadows. How long was he there for? A day? The day? All day? He didn’t move. Only once he did. A faint flicker. An arm, maybe. A sleeve. A…

                But the drugs. Her body ached for them. She was hot and cold at the same time, desperate for anything she didn’t have. Desperate to move, to speak, to scream. Time passed, she wallowed and experience every tiring, aching moment, until there was a knock at the door