They're coming again.
I can hear them. No...I don't really hear them. It’s more like I
can sense them.
How? Is it vibrations?
Are they somehow pushing the molecules of the air towards me as they
approach? Molecules of pain racing towards me...like white blood cells converging on a
foreign substance. For when they come, so does the pain.
I lay here, absorbed in a silent world with only my body's sounds
intruding. I hear the rhythmatic pulsations of my heart as it surges blood in an endless
intricate circle. The dried mucus in my lung weakly pushes out the stale air, gives a
rasping sound…like a scraping of dried bone. The peristalsis of my intestines quiver
as the churning food initiates involuntary contractions and the internal biological noises
of chemical breakdown send out an odd assortment of sounds. The coolness from the constant
drip of the IV deludes my senses. I know I don't really hear each drop but I can predict
it. I have assigned a sound to it anyway.
I peer out of my one cloudy eye. I see their shadows scurrying around
in my world of gray. Monochromatic tones of black and white except for red. Red blood.
Always the blood. I don't remember exactly when I lost the color of the world I have lost
so much including time.
Blood, I have lost a lot of blood. No...I didn't lose it...it was taken
from me. I became a living blood bank. All of us in the ward were. We used to laugh about
it. Locked up to keep us out of society yet our blood flowed through so many veins of
those we were hidden away from. But the laughter stopped when the experiments began.
The shadows cast over me. I don't try to speak...I never try anymore.
The attempt only saddens me. I wait for them to turn the audio switch, the switch which
allows me to join their world even if only partially. But there is no dull metallic
ringing in my ears, no static hum whispering to my brain. It looks like the switch won't
be turned on today.
Again.
I sense one of them bumping into the bodies they pick up the chart to
read it. I know what the chart says. It lists my name, my identification number, and my
crime as well as the subsequent sentence. At least I know what it said years ago...so many
years ago.
Dr. Imir Rankin looked at the chart. He glanced at the picture of the
smiling blond with perfect white teeth captured alluringly by parted pale lips. Ocean blue
eyes graced with long lashes, surrounded by a golden tan. A beach girl he surmised. His
eyes peered from the chart to take a sad look at the old woman on the bed before him. The
teeth were still perfect but no longer hers. The cinnamon skin had turned ashen gray
etched with sagging crevices. The hair was shockingly white and brittle amid patches of
crusty red patches. One eye moved anxiously as if to lock on a target while the space
where the other one was a mangled depression laced with fiberous scar tissue.
But prisoner #11719 was still special. She had been the first. The
doctors were surprised at her resiliency. Her determination hardened with her scars. She
was sometimes referred to as the old maid of the farm. The farm. An innocent term hiding
the sterile names that had lined this ward since its inception. It seemed every warden
renamed the ward in a feeble attempt to hide what went on behind the double set of
swinging doors. But all those who stayed from administration to administration called it
the farm. It was the only name that was true.
Rankin reached out to the gnarled skin and touched it softly.
He didn't want to do this!
I felt a gentle stroking of my cheek. I
can tell it is a touch of compassion but without pity. I try to acknowledge my thanks...my
receipt of their respect but I no longer control my body. My mind is all that I have now
and even that betrays me sometimes.
I have no past. Only scattered images that flicker in and out like a
candle in a storm. I retreat to my childhood and even though I don't really remember
events, only the fleeting scenes that flash before me, I claim them anyways.
A birthday party full of seven-year-old girls in pretty dresses, clock
watching as teachers droned on and on, the terror of my first menstrual cycle. I remember
throwing dirt on a box in the ground and wondering if my father blinked when it sprinkled
above him. That night in the car with Tim Willamson where the pain surprised me and later
with Jimmy Halpin where I learn to ride the masterful strokes.
The images drop randomly on my plate of memories. A wedding where I was
the bride but seemed to be nothing but an observer, a honeymoon filled with sand and
champagne, eyes that I could look deep into and lose myself but that would later chill me
when they turned away with guilt.
Mark. I can't remember his face. All can remember is his back...sweat
meandering down the middle, scratches lining the grooves of his muscles, his shoulder
blades clutched my painted nails...lavendar nails. I remember the nails on the hands...on
the feet as they wrapped around his tightened ass. The cloudy vision of the woman
screaming with scarlet lips in a perfect 0, the flap of Mark's scalp as it bounced against
the wall, the heaviness of the gun as it fell out of my hands.
A period of lightness as life was nothing but passive motion, sweeping
me to oblivion. Lawyers, judges, and then more lawyers speaking a language all their own
and I was nothing more than the ball they played in their on-going game.
I give on trying to guess how many years ago it was when I came. Years
were no longer my mile markers of life. Years were for the free.
Thirty-one years. Rankin let out a breezy whistle that remained
trapped outside of his lips. Thirty-one years! That's how long prisoner #11719 had served
her sentence. She was the first and now she was the last. She was a harvest for the
greater good of civilization. Instead of a death sentence, she was given a life
sentence...for others.
Rankin skimmed through her chart. Her "donations" were
considerable. A kidney, a lung, half of her liver, a cornea, graphs from her skin, bone
marrow...
At first, she had served as a means of life for others...a direct link
to survival. But she was moved to a new level. She became nothing more than a giant white
rat. Her body served as a breeding ground for new diseases, a culture to dump new and
untested drugs into, a victim of science's altruism for society at the expense of the
individual.
Flipping through the pages, Rankin saw the surgical procedures. Breasts
enlarged, breasts reduced. Stomach stapled, stomach unstapled. Plastic surgery to lift
sagging skin, silicone to build cheeks and lips...
The weight chart showed a graph that resembled a seismograph. Liquid
diets, high fat diet, fruit diet, high protein diet...weight added, weight taken off...
She had suffered through many addictions. Nicotine, LSD, heroin, crack,
morphine, and drugs that he didn't recognize. Each one pumped into her to drive her to
ecstasy, each one pulled away to watch the symptoms of withdrawal.
Thumbs detached and then reattached and then lost forever when her
arms were amputated. Her legs taken and observations made on the burning phantom pain. Ear
membranes destroyed to test the power of electrical current in transmitting sound.
Switches and relays to replace the mysteries of neurological synapses.
Scars left from surgical procedures, tubes running in and out of her
body...colostomy, tracheotomy, drainage tubes running from her
gastro-intestinal region to seep out the biological poison injected in her—
Rankin snapped the chart shut. He didn't want to read anymore.
As he watched the drool slowly ease from her mouth in a continuous
stream, he realized that perhaps, just perhaps, what he had to do was the right thing
after all.
The presence is still there. He is out
of my limited eyesight but doesn't matter I can't see faces anyways. Blurry round images
that swivel around is all I have seen for a long time.
I try to conjure up faces from my past so that I can give them away.
But they all disappear into non-descript silhouettes whose features float incoherently. I
close my eye tight to bring an absolute blackness but it is soon disrupted by white stars
that flicker...my personal universe that is on the screen on my eyelid.
I think I hear the sound of a baby's cry but I know that is impossible.
The sounds come more frequently then they used to, maybe even every day but I don't know
one day from the next so I'm not sure.
Of everything they did to me, that was the worst. I can almost laugh
when I think of the first time. How could I not know?
Strapped into the bed, tested constantly. I thought that somehow I had
a disease but when ft finally dawned on me what kind of tests they were, I was stunned.
I was pregnant.
The bastards used me as a surrogate mother. They implanted sperm in me
to create fife because I had taken one.
I had nine children. I never saw any of them, they were taken away as
soon as they left my body. Perhaps they thought that I wouldn't have any attachment to
them if I never saw them...perhaps they just didn't care. But a mother always has
attachments. The first wail from the treasure grown in your womb is more of a bond than
science or psychiatry can ever fully understand.
I never even knew what sex they were but I heard that the first one was
a boy. In my mind, they all were boys. Boys had a better chance of survival in the world
without feeling the pain that girls must go through. I could identify with the girls too
much but the boys, they could adjust better. I wished that I could have seen at least one
of them so that I could give them all a memory. My own children and they have no face!
I started to name them after the angels. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael,
Urile...but then I couldn't remember anymore of them, so Il went with the Gospel. Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. The ninth one was Paul. I figured that I would name the next four
after the Beatles, not realizing that there would only be one more. Of course, I realized
that there would be two Johns but that was okay. John was my father's name...I think.
Rankin sighed. He casually rubbed his face and reflected that he
should've shaved this morning. God, he wished he could go out and have a cigarette. But he
had quit some ten years ago.
He was stalling. He knew that.
Why him, he wondered. Appointed by the court. He knew he could back out
of it. Moral grounds...religious beliefs...he knew he could come up with a dozen reasons.
But it wouldn't look good on his record. And for #11719, it didn't matter who it was. It
didn't matter to anyone.
Except for Petersen.
Charles M. Petersen. A two bit lawyer who got a bug up his ass
about the treatment of prisoners. Prisoners have rights too was his motto. For twelve
years, Petersen had petitioned the courts against the cruel and unusual treatment that was
dispensed in the farm. No one else cared! Not the ACLU, not the public, not the system.
Oh, sure they cared enough to ease their conscious with mild protest but deep down, down
in that level where truth can't be denied, no one really cared.
Except for Petersen.
It became a vendetta for Petersen. No one knew why, but he managed to
finally bring it to everyone's attention including the Supreme Court. Suddenly, the public
cared too. After all, how could you condone it? The typical peer pressure as everyone
clamored to ride the train of righteousness. Now they all stood behind him as he was
chosen to be their custodian of morality.
Rankin flipped the switch and the red light above the masking tape
labeled audio blinked on. She deserves to know. He felt she was owed at least that much.
The screech races into my head and throws my head back in an
involuntary arch. A gurgling noise invades my world…I have sound, I hear noise...but
it is indistinguishable. I still welcome it. It takes me out of the depths...
Rankin leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
I see a shadow blocking the light. I feel a slight wetness on my head.
Now, the shadow pulls back.
Rankin stood at the side of the bed and I looked down. He lifted
the cover on the electrical plate and placed his finger on the power switch.
"I'm sorry."
What was that? Someone said something. Did they call out my name? Did
they call out...out...
Oh my God! I don 't even remember my name anymore!R
Rankin turned his head as his finger pushed the switch to the off
position.
Please...not that. Don't take that away from me. Leave me
something...please! My name...me... it's all I have left...don't take that away from me!
Rankin watched the bevels of the oxygen cylinder push out one last
gasp.
You've taken everything else! All I've been through...l can survive all
that...l can survive anything, just leave me that much...please....
...the green blip on the monitor jumped fast....
Tell me...tell me my name...that's all I need.. ...
then slow...before pushing straight...
Please...l—
Rankin pulled the white sheet over her head. He hesitated for a
second. He smiled. It was finally over for her and he saw a tear had pooled in the recess
of her eye. He turned away and nodded slightly to himself. Yes, he had done good.
