I slumped into bed, my mind racing as thoughts chorused into a bellowing chant. Incomprehensible speech relayed with raw repetition, pounding my every idea, choking them as they formed, enveloping my world before me in a blanket of darkness, left indistinguishable from right. How could I live like this? When such a monotonous and simple task as sleep would send me spiralling into a feverish episode.

  Time had slipped through my hands, like fine grains of sand, before I had regained full control of my senses. Cold sweat layered my forehead and uncontrollable shivers permeated my pale skin - I was a mess. Tears flowed and a gentle stream had formed across my bed sheets by the time I brought myself to look up and prepare for another daunting sleep.

  All nights before the beginning of this week had been conquered with restful slumber, it was but a few days ago when things had begun to take a turn for the worst.

  As sleep had taken me that first night, visions of ecstasy had played, a seemingly typical dream of fantasy - transforming into a heroic prince to save a damsel in distress, fighting the draconic overlord. Then the real visions began to play, flashing images that imprinted themselves onto my eyelids of clutching hands and mutilated corpses reaching out to me, in some fleeting attempt for salvation. Sickening displays of wars and massacres were carved deep into my memory, a thought that some entity, monster, or God did not want me to forget so easily - worse than any human nation could conjure. Screams of the masses would pierce my ears with such fierce torment that for the following days their songs of agony would play in my head on an endless loop.

  To show for the endless torture, my appearance had begun to show severe signs of wear: eyebags sat heavy under my lifeless pupils; my hair an unkempt birdsnest; clothes unwashed to the point with every movement came an echoing crunch as crusted garments folded over each other.

  Curled into a foetal position, it had begun to dawn on me in a brief moment of salvation from the onslaught of hellish images, that the runes carved in schizophrenic fashion across my room came about from a person of no sane mind. I laughed. A dry scream of a laugh. And I clutched at my hair, rocking back and forth, back and forth, my vision spinning. The walls closed in, splatters of crimson that formed lurid symbols began to swirl, amalgamating into bloodied vision.

  Senses that I once thought my own were now being puppeteered, I was about to become victim to whatever horrific scenes were about to play and my body was too rigid and frozen to react in any fight or flight manner.

  Insomnia that had once pervaded my system had lost, the bloody cloud fading as nothingness became all that was. I felt my body give way, crashing into the bed frame and sliding down onto the cushioning pillows.

  ---

  A gentle hum permeated the otherwise noiseless room, the droning monotonous, like the air conditioner you’d find in a damp basement. Except this room wasn’t damp, a harsh chill pierced my clothless body, sending sharp shivers down my spine - it arched in response thrusting me forward where my wrists met cold shackles. A dull clang of metal rang out, reverberating against the walls in an almost antagonistic response. Turning to see my restraints, I soon learned - I had no eyes. Not that I couldn’t open them, or they were sewn shut, but where my eyes were supposed to be sat soft flesh - a continuation of my cheeks that ran across the entirety of my face.

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  I screamed.

  Shrieking, I hugged my frigid body, curling into a depressive mass. Clutching either forearm, it soon came to me they were broad and toned, far from what they should’ve been. Stark naked I traced my figure - estranged from my own body and unfamiliar to the shapes that now rested in my palm. Deep grooves were etched, from head to toe, not dissimilar from those that were painted in my room - like scars I wore them with hate.

  I slumped against the wall, my mind racing with those very same thoughts, yet this time they formed a cohesive cacophony, forming a discordant array of the same sentence.

  This is all too real.

  That buzz of the room invaded my thoughts before the impending sense of doom could grip me and it occurred to me - it was almost static - the room felt alive.

  Dropping to my knees, I traced the floor in darkness, a smooth, numbing surface met my fingers - similar to the feeling of sliding your hand across an iron plate. Yet, electricity or something synonymous, danced between my digits, forming concentric circles as I laid my palm flat against the floor. Sweeping from left to right it followed, that feeling tingling the edge of my palm to the centre. I widened my arcing and it followed still, bigger and bigger I went. This unnatural sensation had consumed me, it was as if I was a child again, playing with a toy car or some hexbug that would vibrate when you held it - something so familiar yet wildly inhuman. Otherworldly.

  Sudden disgust crept over me when my hand met a bulbous vein that was fixed into the floor, pulsating like a beating heart, just narrower than my hand so I could grip it as it throbbed - palpitated. Fleshy contents squirmed beneath my fingers, the contents of the vein travelling towards me and into the wall that my back now rested against.

  Panic set in as tunnel vision left me and all my senses returned, including the feeling of a heavy object that protruded from the base of my neck. A protective sheath rested firmly with its teeth set deep into my muscle tissue and that same pulsating vein connected to it like a pipe fitting. I was connected to this living, breathing room.

  Was I some part of an organic computer? Where my mind was to be hijacked and repurposed, exploited by some alien for some meagre computations. Or was I being plumped up and fattened to be fed on? A thousand possibilities consumed me, each one objecting the last in a frenzy of reason. If I were to have eyes, they would be wide set and bulging with my hands clasped over them in manic fashion, with nails biting at the tender skin of my forehead and cheeks.

  “Initial note: Patient Genesis appears distressed due to lack of eyes. Changes will need to be amended to ensure a stable environment whilst maintaining limited knowledge and understanding…” crackled from what seemed to be loud speakers around the room.

  “Preparing to return Patient Genesis to its place of origin. Begin the return transfer sequence.”

  Without warning the runes carved deep into my flesh sizzled as if I had just been branded by a hot iron, I clenched my teeth as the sensation travelled around my torso and down my limbs. Flailing in desperation, I could do nothing to stop my skin being torn from my skeleton or my soul being torn from the lifeless vessel that now lay in that room. A strange feeling overcame me, what I could only describe as drowning in a sea of treacle, my movements sluggish and without purpose.

  Before my senses left me, a single sentence rang out - “Successful transference of Patient Genesis, prepare for disposal of test vessel four.”

  It all began to make sense, the visions leading up to now, the alien cyphers I had painted in my room - I was being…