This Shan't Hurt a Bit

How the fuck did I end up in this situation? Stuck, lying here with my arm on the other side of the bloody (quite literally) room. Wondering when they are going to come back, hopefully this time, they’ll finish me off.
Rewind about four days (I think… it’s hard to keep time in here with only one window and constant blackouts.) I wasn’t able to get picked up from school, and my car was being repaired, so I had to take the hour long walk back home. Year 12 was almost over; about five weeks…I was so close to graduating. I was about three or four blocks away from home when I saw a four or five year old kid run out of his drive holding a little, bright orange scooter. I walked past him, thinking nothing of it, when I saw a car come out from the driveway. Odd. Who would be leaving the same house that an unattended kid is leaving to go scootering? Were these parents just neglectful? No, maybe only a relative was leaving or… or something. I was adamant it was nothing I needed to get involved in, so I paid it no mind.
I continued walking for about a minute when I felt the metal scooter slam into the back of my legs. I fell down and let out more swears than I would like to admit to when there was a kid around. But, instead of hearing anything like “sorry” or “oops” I felt another whack from the scooter. Harder, over the head. The last sound I remembered was the screeching of tyres. Not the tyres of any worried passer-by though. No, far from it.
I woke up, tied to a cold steel table. There I saw a figure, somewhere in my blurred vision. Despite my position, and what was happening, I still had to be a smart arse. It’s how I cope with this sort of thing.
“Ugh, a steel table, innit that a little cliche?”
No answer.
“Come on smiley, what’s the matter, did you want me to scream?”
“This shan’t hurt a bit,” was all it said.
With that, no noise, just the feeling of cold sharp metal cut my arm.
“Fffff…Auh!”
I wasn’t much of a smart arse after that.
He continued to cut my arm, with seemingly random, wild stabs, no rhyme or reason to the way he cut, just to torture. Only after I regained consciousness from the first black out, did it continue. It cut my arm, from the bottom of my shoulder blade, hacking away at the bone with a scalpel like a butter knife on a tough piece of steak. The pain was overwhelming; I couldn’t even focus on my own screams, just the pain, the searing, and burning feeling as he cut through the bone… my bone. When it was done, just as insult to injury, he slapped me in the face with my own severed arm.
I was left alone in that room for what I assume was two days to weep, too weak from blood loss to do anything else.
“Having fun in there?” I heard a voice say. Not in the room, over some sort of P.A. system.
I laughed weakly. “Better than having to worry about final exams,” I croaked out. Trying to gain my composure for my newly discovered audience.
“He he, yes indeed, you do not need to worry about exams anymore.”
That was it, until that night.
He came back, forcing water down my throat. I choked as water went up my fucking nose.
“Careful with that thing will ya?”
“Yes, please shut up now.”
That’s all it said, except for one sentence, seconds before the scalpel once again hit my flesh.
“This shan’t hurt a bit.”
That searing, jarringly sharp pain returned once more but not to my stub of an arm, but this time, my leg, on the opposite side of my body. I couldn’t bear even the thought of going through that pain again but here I was, experiencing it all over again. Once the limb was detached, I unwillingly kicked myself in the eye and was left until morning.
In the morning, on what I assume is day four, I was shaken by the figure. For the first time in four days, my vision wasn’t blurry. A man, looking in his 50s or 60s was beside me.
“Let’s go.”
That voice… the same one I had heard before.
“What now?” I once again, barely croaked out.
“Ah, so you lived. Good.”
He grabbed me, and carried me down a long hallway. I couldn’t help but notice all the portraits hanging up, as some were very old, but everyone was in an identical frame.
{Sire Walter BlackSmite – 1412 – 1451}
{Sire Francis Hubris – 1451 – 1496}
{Sir Matthew Arnold – 1496 – 1529}
This went on, all the way down to recent years.
{Dr. Steven Marcos – 1943 – 1978}
{Dr. Paul Smith – 1978 – 2014}
Finally, I notice the last frame, no picture, just the inscription.
{Dr. Aaron Farthing – 2014 -}
Aaron Farthing… that’s me.
I was so perplexed that I didn’t even realize that none of these men seemed to even live to 50, even the recent portraits.
We continued down the hall where I saw rooms, with giant glass (pains) that showcased someone tied down to a metal table, each room. One man was missing his eyes, another, his ears, a woman in the adjacent room lost her tongue and legs, and this went on for ages. The first ones were screaming, the next few were not, and as we kept going, the bodies were more decayed, on and on we went until we got to room 499, with a body nothing more than a skeleton.
“Patient 500, congratulations, you get to take over. You are the next in line.”
“What the fuck are you on about, what is all of this sick shit?”
“I have killed my 499 people. Once I clear out my victims, I may finally die. Thank you Aaron.”
I was stunned beyond words, I could not make heads or tails of anything he just said.
“You see, you must fill each and every one of these room with a body, uniquely tortured before you turn 50 or else...” He trailed off.
“What? Or else what? What is even going on!?” I couldn’t figure out on what to focus on, it was too much to take in.
“If you live to 50, you become the final patient, and you are not allowed to die until every single synapse in your brain is individually severed… Do you know how many synapses are in your brain Aaron?”
“I… no…”
“About 100 trillion Aaron… you must lay there and endure 100 trillion micro cuts until your body just collapses.”
“That must be medically impossible.”
“Not for people like us Aaron.”
“Like who? What is this place?”
“This is where you live now Aaron. We are the ones that put the balance of the world back in order, without us, the world would go into anarchy.”
And with that, he left me in this chair, at the end of the corridor, with more questions than answers. I blacked out one last time.
So, here I lay, a prosthetic arm, a prosthetic leg and 499 rooms to fill with people before I am 50 years old. I noticed a name tag on my desk that seems to answer a lot of my questions, maybe it will answer yours too but for now, I need to hunt for someone. Someone I can see who isn’t abiding by OUR rules. Stealing, bullying, anything even trivial like stepping on a crack makes you a blip on my radar.
I took a look at the portraits and realized something. The first man had no arm, and a sort of wooden stump, cupped around his stump of a right leg. The next man, quite the same, and as the portraits go on, the prosthetic seem to look a little better. I am unsure what this means right now but I assure you more information will come once I know anything. But for now, I have no choice…
I sit here, in my ‘office,’ my new name on my desk, mocking me until death, when I may become Aaron Farthing once again. Here, is the office of me, Karma.
If I could just turn back time, before I ran over that old man, before I got drunk behind the wheel and cost that man an arm and a leg. But hey, I guess that's karma huh?
...
This shan’t hurt a bit.
Category:Mental Illness
Category:Reality