Page 11 of Senseless
Ducking my head and squeezing down the narrow staircase, I reached the basement floor to find Doc waiting for me.
“You keep coming back,” he stated, leaning against the chair in the center of the room. “That’s promising.” The frizzy gray hair on the top of his head was illuminated by the long, tungsten light tubes hanging from the ceiling.
“Let’s get this over with.” I went to the chair and sat down. The metal frame didn’t budge under my weight, due to being bolted down to the concrete floor.
“Had a couple drinks?” Doc asked casually as he wrapped the attached metal cuffs around my arms and legs.
“Yes.” I watched him shackle me in, always making sure to slide two fingers between my skin and the cuffs to check my circulation. “Why do you suggest drinking before this, anyway?”
“Alcohol depresses the central nervous system.” His matter-of-fact tone reminded me ofher.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and shoved thoughts of her away. There was no room for her here.
“With the physical senses dulled and inhibitions lowered, it’s easier for the patient to goinward.” Once I was fully restrained, he tapped my forehead with one finger and gave me an unnerving smile. “That’s where we go during these treatments, Ivan. Are you ready?”
I was never ready, not really. I hated, dreaded,loathedevery second of this. But I could feel it changing me. The monster created within me lashed out in full force during these sessions, but I could feel it weakening, like its energy was being spent. The nightmares still came, but they didn’t send me on a destructive rampage like they used to.
Shehad told Shadow something once, that he—I—had to address the root of my fear, the cause of what morphed me into this creature, before I could get better. Taking sleeping pills hadn’t protected her from me, so she was probably right. But I couldn’t imagine this being what she had in mind.
“Yeah.” I lifted my eyes to Doc. “Go ahead.”
The man took his glasses off and stuffed them in his shirt pocket. From the same pocket, he pulled a length of string with one end tied through a hole in a coin.
“Take a few deep breaths, Ivan.” The coin spun on the string before Doc held it still with his opposite hand.
I pulled deep lungfuls of air through my nose, releasing them through my mouth as he’d instructed me on our first day. After a cycle of ten breaths, Doc released the coin and held it from the top of the string, roughly a foot in front of my face.
“Continue your breaths,” he said as the coin began to swing in slow arc from left to right. “Let your eyes follow the coin as you listen to my voice.”
Doc stood just outside of my field of vision, letting my eyes focus only on the coin swinging in front of me, and the empty room beyond. Eventually the two began to blur, my focus pulling inward at the lack of stimulation from my surroundings. I wasn’t sure how Doc knew, but this was always the spot where he guided me further.
“Good, Ivan. I’m going to count backwards from ten now. With each count, I want you to descend into yourself. Like stepping into an elevator going down. Ten…nine…eight…”
My eyelids grew heavier as he counted, shutting to the point of not fully closed, but where I could barely see through my eyelashes. I didn’t strain for sight, knowing now that my eyes wouldn’t show me my physical surroundings, but what I shoved away deep in my mind. That was where my internal elevator was descending.
“…Five…four…three…”
All physical sensations fell away until it felt like I was floating. I didn’t feel the chair underneath me or the cuffs locking my limbs down. New sensations took over that felt like they were in my body, but I knew they weren’t. It was unnerving howrealthings could feel, deep in the recesses of my mind.
“…One.”
Doc’s voice fell away and the best way I could describe the feeling was coldness. A chill on my skin and also within me, along with a deep, gaping emptiness. I now knew that feeling to be profound loneliness.
“Where are you, Ivan?”
I didn’t need to force my eyes open to know exactly where I was.
“I’m here, in my cage.” My body felt small in this place, this time, the voice coming out of it sounded too big.
“Is anyone with you?”
“No, I’m alone.”
“Can you tell me how old you are at this point in your life?”
I moved my head slowly, taking in the surroundings of the prison embedded deep in my memories. Iron bars covered in dark specks of my blood. Dark stains on the concrete floor—more of my blood. A small pile of bones in the corner of the cage, some animal I’d eaten and picked clean two days before. I was starving again.
“I…don’t know.”
