Patient Zero
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power...
Revelation 20:6
In a grey building, down a dark hallway, behind a thickly painted white door, in a small room, in a small corner, she sits naked on the floor, -her legs drawn up against her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees, her greasy hair draped, her face hidden.
A small bed is pushed against the wall across from her, cold and unused, leather straps hanging from its frame. Underneath it, the discarded blue hospital gown she wore for a time, though she cannot recall exactly when. Nearby her, a sink of aged steel, water dribbling out of the small hole that serves as a tap. Above it, a steel mirror inset into the wall, its surface warped, reflecting back a distorted image of the room. A small, lime encrusted toilet squats nearby.
A small drainage hole, covered by a dark circular grate, adorns the center of the room. On the ceiling, a single phosphorus bulb, protected by a dirty steel cage, flickers with an electric tick and buzz, casting erratic strobed shadows on the walls, barely lighting the confines of the room. In a high corner of the room, a small camera watches, its small red eye glows unblinking, a single star in the concrete sky of the ceiling. The door is heavy, bare save a small square above for eyes and a slightly larger square below for food.
She sits unmoving, oblivious to the cold of the floor against her bum, the uneveness of the walls pressing on her hips. She sits, listening to the buzztick of the light, the water trickling down the sink drain, the murmor of memories in her head.
She remembers that she had been someone once, she had a name. She tries to remember it and fails. With a wave of a mental hand, she dismisses her search and instead focuses on other flashes that emerge through the thick fog of her mind, -the reflection of a woman. Blonde hair, dark blue eyes that shone dully above a seemingly forced smile. A slim body, the feel of curves in tight-fitting tops and impossibly short skirts, of feet in tottering high heels, of waxy lipstick on red lips and teeth.
Her hand twitches as she remembers, the broken nails of one hand dragging uneven scratches across one knee, then balling into a fist. It clenches, then slowly relaxes as her mind plays back again, images flashing across her minds eye.
She remembers the smell of the streets, wet concrete and asphalt reflecting the harsh neon signs and silhouettes of buildings towering above her. The clop of her heels resounding off of the walls, the downward looks of other faceless women that walk the same streets as her, the thick smell of their purfume briefly overpowering the pungent city odors as they pass.
Other faces. The faces of so many men flitting by her eyes in a panorama of gutteral lust, their eyes roaming the contours of her body, the leering smiles, tongues running wetly over dry mouths. They speak in low voices, the undercurrent of fear and self-doubt masked by overconfident words as they barter for her flesh. The smells of their cars, the melded odor of stale cigarettes and liquor, unwashed skin reeking of sweat and man-cheese. The feel of rough hands pinching and scraping soft skin, teeth biting tender spots and drawing blood, hips bruising, ragged breath in her face as they rut.
A moan escapes her, the sound echoing around the small room. A large cockroach scuttles out of the floor grate and pauses, antenne searching.
The faces leering in her vision fall suddenly back, leaving only one, which burns in the center of her mental vision with fierce intensity.
He was different. His voice was soft, his tone unstressed. No beads of nervous sweat dotted his forehead. His dark eyes roamed her, yet held no lust, simply scrutiny. Questions came from him that she'd not heard from the others. Drugs? No. Children? No. Record? Not yet, she laughed. He had nodded, his smile not reaching his eyes, dark as pitch.
His car was small, but clean. His smell was clean, his face unreadable. His money was new and plentiful. She sat in his car, smiling. The green glow of his dashlights cut his face in half as he leaned in, whispered that it would be alright, the rag in his left hand covered her mouth and nose tightly. The sweet smell of anesthetic rolled her eyes back and darkness descended like a curtain.
She remembers waking, head pounding, a flickering light compounding the throbbing in her head as her eyes darted around the room. A red light shone in a dark corner across from her. A loud click resounds and the door opens, two men, two faces enter, the panic rising sharply as she realizes that her arms and feet are bound to the bed she lies on. She recognises one of the faces, the face with questions, with dark eyes. The other face is unfamiliar, twin gold bars on his collar flashing in the unsteady flicker of the light. She remembers crying out as they produce vials and needles. The pressure of hands holding her arm down, the sharp prick of flesh, vials soon dark with her blood disappear back in the pockets of the faces lab coats.
The dark eye face leaning in, to her ear, whispering that everything will be alright, telling her to sleep. Another prick in her neck and sweet darkness.
The images blur in her mind, memories melding together in a stream of agonizing familiarity.
Hours passing into days, into weeks, then irrelevance in the small room. She remembers screaming up at the red eye till her voice was a hoarse whisper. Tied to the bed, wrists and ankles sore from struggling, weeping in shame the first time she deficated on herself, bled on herself.
He would always arrive eventually. The dark eye face, accompanied by other faces that she couldn't recall and didn't care to. Only him, the face that led her to this hell, did she remember. He would always whisper the same thing, that it would be alright, followed by that familiar sting in her neck. When she awoke, her soiled gown would be changed, her oozing bedsores treated with salve, the sheets crisp under her freshly washed body. Eating was a degrading neccessity, more white-coated faces, grunting, forcing her to a chair and feeding her, bound, threatening a tube if she didn't comply. The food a pasty, tasteless goo, her water running from an iv stand to her arm twice a day.
The tests were continuous. Countless vials, brimming with her blood. Machines wheeled in, a symphony of flashing lights and electronic noises as the faces read streaming data, jotting down notes on plastic clipboards. Injections that burned in her veins and made her retch with nausea. Agony as bits of her flesh were taken with glinting knives.
Snippets of conversation between the faces. Terms like 'failed synthesis' and 'neural recalibration' floated between them as they looked at her, probed with cold tools and prodded with latex hands.
She felt herself succumb to the routine of abuse. Her body no longer resisted, the dark corners of her mind that she retreated to becoming ever more familiar and inviting. Only his face would follow, his dark eyes followed her even there, still appraising her huddled, helpless form.
She had no idea how long the restraints which held her limbs had been unfastened. She remembers weakly moving an arm and feeling no resistance. Surprised, sitting up, her hands going instinctively to her calloused wrists, rubbing them absently. The stiffness of unwilling muscles, shuddering as she swings her legs to the edge of the bed, the oddness of the floor under her feet.
She stood, burning nausea hit her in a sickly wave, her legs shuddered from disuse. She fell heavily to the ground. Crawling to the toilet, she retched up a foul-smelling yellow mucus, the splash of the jetting fluid loud in her ears as her face hung in the bowl, yet she didn't choke or sputter. She wiped the ichor from her mouth with an arm and sat up, realizing that something had changed.
Still on her knees, she anxiously felt her body, running her hands over herself, over her gown then under. Her skin was mottled, greying with blue tinges on the back of her arms and legs. It felt heavy, numb, but thinner, sliding over her bones like an ill-fitting glove. The river of veins on her hands and feet no longer prominent, but black and shrunken, her nails yellowed, accented by hairline fractures that extended to curled cuticles.
With a grunt of effort, she grasped the sink and rose to her feet, bracing herself against it as she peered at her distorted bust in the metal mirror. Her once ample breasts sagged, deflating. Her cheeks, once high on her face also dropped, forming jowls, her eyes sunken and yellowed. She grinned into the mirror, pulling back cracked lips with ancient looking fingers and inspected her mouth. Her teeth looked long, gums receeding and pale, her tongue nearly as grey as her skin. She felt odd, detatched from herself. Her insides felt heavy, her belly distended. A coldness in her chest which spread from her shoulders to her crotch. She clutched the front of her gown with a fist, pressed it against her instinctively to stave off the sensation, felt nothing behind her ribs.
She blinked rapidly, trying unsuccessfully to produce tears to clear her fogged vision. The buzztick of the light intensified in her ears as she fought to comprehend what they, what he had done. She thought back on the relentless tests, the mind-numbing sedatives, the constant abuse of her body. He had taken her, decided her fate and transformed her into the distorted stranger reflected back at her. She sat beyond death, touched but not taken, embraced, then abandoned, her ghost cast indifferently back into the shell of her body. Forgotten, like the countless faces that took her other self so many times, a lifetime ago.
She tried to laugh, but made no sound till she forced air into her dead lungs, the sound wheezed out as a low groan. She staggered to the bed and sat heavily on the edge of it, shoulders slumped, arms dangled between her bluish knees. Her ghost eagerly retreated into herself, a single desire left burning in the forefront of her wasted mind.
She stirs from her memories, body shifting slightly, ignoring the small puddle of brown ichor pooling around her, trickling from the ruin of her lower orafices. The cockroach scuttles to the puddles expanding edge, testing with its antenne before tenatively partaking of it, jaws lapping rapidly. Her next memory is vivid, a technicolor stream of images flickering past her mental vision with absolute clarity.
She cannot remember how long she sat on the bed, catatonic, her ghost waiting deep within the recesses of her shell, but she remembers the loud click of the lock on the door, the twin pairs of footsteps walking toward, then stopping near her unmoving form. He had returned, his smell unmistakeable, his dark eyes still appraising her. Standing over her with the other face, who she vaguely remembered as the one with gold bars, still glinting on his white collar.
She listened to him, his voice still soft and unstressed, as he spoke of successful reanimation, of her success where so many others before had failed. The gold bar face talked of military applications, of biological superiority. Dark eye face spoke of taking a final sample before her autopsy and disposal, gold bar face grunting his agreement.
She felt him lean in, grasping the top of her still bowed head with one hand as he slowly inserted a large needle into her discolored neck with a thick pop, the jugular pierced. He pulled back the plunger, the syringe filled with brown, milky fluid. He leaned close to her ear, whispered that it would be alright, that she would sleep forever soon, as the needle slid out of her neck, more fluid tracing from the puncture to her collar in a brown stream, staining the neckline of her gown.
Her eyes snapped open, thick fluid teeming around the edges of her shriveled lids as she gazed into his dark eyes, which widened in surprise.
"Yes," she breathed raggedly in his face, "it will be alright."
She leaned forward, grabbed the back of his head with both hands and bit fiercely into his cheek. His warm blood filled her mouth as she yanked her head back, a portion of his cheek and lips tearing away with a wet ripping sound.
Dark eye face screamed in delicious agony, falling backward into gold bar face, one hand clutching his ruined face, blood running freely between his fingers, spattering in large red drops on the floor. Gold bar face bellowed in pain and surprise as he clutched his leg, the syringe buried deep in his thigh, the plunger half-depressed. He tore it out with a cry and stared at it in his hand, eyes and mouth wide in terror.
Beside him, dark eye face scrabbled to his feet, moaning, his polished loafers smearing his blood into red streaks on the floor, his exposed teeth and jawbone glinting a dull white through the ragged hole in his face. Still shouting, they both rushed through the door and slammed it shut, the lock turning with a loud click.
She stared at the door after them, chewing methodically. Blood and gobbets of fat and tissue dribbled down her chin and onto the front of her gown. Her grey tongue licked her gore-coated lips, her ghost releshing the taste of him.
After a while, she stood, swayed. She shuffled to the opposite corner of the room, where she pulled the gore-soaked gown over her head and sent it skidding under the bed in a heap. With a deep sigh, she slid her body down to the floor, her knees cradled by her arms, head against her chest.
She reaches down and pinches the cockroach between now rotting fingers. Slowly, she slips the struggling insect into her mouth, biting down with a crunch.
She remembers the alarms sounding later, the shouts outside the door, the gunshots. She remembers the long silence after, broken only by the buzztick of the light, now flickering desperately, clinging to the twilight of its existence. She listens to the moans that occasionally come from the other side of the door, the shuffling of feet dragging through the dusty, darkened halls. She smells the decay of them, of her and prays that her ghost can one day leave the shell it is confined to.
She hears a wet fist, pounding weakly on the other side of the door. She raises her head, milky white eyes thick with yellow crust, turning to look at it. She imagines that it is the dark eye face, his body rotting as he mindlessly carries out the sentence of his dark conviction, a product of his own heinous designs. The edges of her cracked mouth turn up, her rotten teeth now thick with crushed insect shell and leg as she smiles at the door.
She hopes so...
