Page 185 of Brainwashed

Fuck…

They’re coming at me slowly with a straitjacket. My face whips over my shoulder to find Templeton and the new guy lurching toward me from the other side. They have me cornered.

Blood rushes in my ears as I try to dive around the orderlies. But they grab me.

“Fuck you!” I struggle against them, fighting them with all my strength, ripping my arms and kicking my legs. “Let me go!”

“I’ll handle this.” The black-haired guy steps over and I notice a giant syringe in his hand.

My eyes widen in panic. “Fuck… no! Lem! Lem, help!”

My cries are cut off when he sticks it into my neck.

And everything goes black.

My head weighs a hundred pounds.

My throat is dry, my lips are cracked. I’m sore all over and my eyelids are so heavy I can barely lift them.

Eventually I manage it, but my vision is blurry…

My glasses.

There’s something on my face. Something I can feel that’s blocking my mouth, like a fucking muzzle. I try reaching up to touch it, but I can’t move my arms. I assume it’s because of the straitjacket… But something feels different.

Where am I??

I attempt to look around, but I can’t move my neck either. Or my legs.I can’t move anything!All I can do is wiggle my fingers and toes, blink and move my mouth behind this covering strapped to my face. That’s literally it.

I’m frozen.

The more I come to, trying like hell to remember something or pick out a detail nearby that gives me some answers, the more I realize that my back is leaning against something. Something hard, metal. Like a slab.

Jerking forward, I feel my torso strapped down. My legs, too.

My breathing is picking up, heart rate increasing steadily as I writhe and squirm and fight against whatever is holding me. I’mtrapped.

I’m fucking suffocating.

“Oh fuck, oh Jesus…” I gasp, closing my eyes tight, trying to suck air in through this damn muzzle covering my mouth. “Okay, calm down.” My voice is muffled by the tightness of the mask.“Just breathe. Everything is fine.”

I see blurred movement and my eyes jump in its direction.

“Nice pep talk.” The voice is familiar.

Goddammit, not this asshole.

“You know, Felix, I don’t know what you’re whining about,” Templeton goes on, rambling his nonsense while I try to remember to breathe, muzzled and strapped to a slab like Hannibal freaking Lecter. “You’ve had a lot of privileges here. Infinitely more than any of the other sad, withering bodies in this prison. You’ve gotten better food, clothes… Even before your Doctor Daddy came along, you got drugs and sex.”

I can’t quite see him. It’s too blurry without my glasses, but I can hear the evil grin in his voice. The memory of him touching me makes my skin crawl.

“And then Lemuel shows up and you get even more freedoms,” he growls. “You get to sleep in a mansion! Shit, I don’t even get that. You’ve been pampered like some kind of depraved royalty. The wicked prince of Alabaster Penitentiary.”

He moves his face in front of mine, and I can make out his pale skin, almost translucent. His dark eyes, a gross hazel, like a swamp. This guy might be a doctor, but he’s every bit as evil as I am. I can tell.

It’s like Lem wrote in his book…

We all have good in us. We all house evil. The extent to which we practice it is what separates us from them.