6 September 2012
It was cold - mercilessly cold - inside the tank. My bare flesh was spotted with goosebumps and my tail flickered and shook in the water. At the sides of my neck, my gills fluttered in a haphazard attempt at breathing regularly. I craved, no... NEEDED salt. My skin was turning a sickly grey that stank of death. Without salt I wouldn't last much longer. A taser hit my sharp ribs, for what felt like the thousandth time, and I started swimming again. I'd learned to cooperate. Without cooperation it was always worse. I would swim, enduring the weapon-like stings of the taser. I would swim until my vision blurred and spotted. Until I couldn't feel the sting anymore. I didn't remember life before the whitecoats - not much, anyway. I can remember my family. My doctor-parents and older, successful siblings. I was the mistake. The black sheep of the family. Then one day, it stopped. I couldn't remember anything but torture. And endless treatments. The familiar drone of the whitecoats fee through to my ears and I felt myself lifted from the bottom of the tank. Deposited on a table. Strapped to an IV. Prodded at with thick, metal tongs.
Then, silence.
Made To Merman. • Opuss № I