The Injection

TITLE: The Injection

AUTHOR: Arianna Kanji

My body never took well to medication. It was a curse, really, to have DNA that wanted nothing more but to reject all intruders. A fully forged immune system might have protected me against petty illness and runny noses, but injections were a necessary part of my day, and it was becoming increasingly harder to convince the doctor there was nothing wrong.

He dug the needle in deeper and I winced. A dribble of blood leaked out of the nape of my neck and twisted into my shirt. He rather forcefully pulled up my chin and aimed the pointed instrument at yet another spot, this time a little lower. It was the fifth round already. Usually it didn’t take nearly this long.

“All right there buddy?” he asked gruffly. I didn’t respond. Usually, by this point, the chemicals had already slithered their way under my skin like little pests, their electrostatic movement shivering my bones. But today, I could feel nothing. Nothing except a small tingling near my left ear and a deep ache all along the side of my neck. 

I could see defeat slowly overcoming the doctor’s vision. Catching his eye, I tossed him a pleading glance. “Once more?” He scoffed but begrudgingly abided, sliding the needle just next to where my collar bone protruded through thin, almost translucent skin.

The reaction was immediate—the area began to darken into little blotches, and the hairs of my legs stood up in a panic. Little bits of my skin dried up all along that side, sticking together and forming clumps. A lopsided smile on his face, the doctor set his needle down into a sleek leather case and glanced at me. “Sixth times the charm, eh?” There was something indescribable plaguing his eye.

“It’ll be better next time, I promise.” I stood up shakily and ventured towards the door.

The look in his eyes didn’t leave. “The swelling will go down in six hours time!” he called over his shoulder, as he always did. It was the rule. Even if it always took less time than that, they still had to make a technically unrealistic promise. I passed by rows upon rows of identically dressed people, all here for injections. Some waited with patience, and some did not. I continued down the long white halls, ignoring the muted screaming of a patient situated just to my left. The injection would cure whatever madness plagued their grief-stricken eyes. It did for me, anyway. 

For the rest of the day, I was free to explore the facility in peace. The schedule was never strenuous on injection days, for fear of something that I would never understand. The doctors, all clad in long white coats and protective eyewear, were the ones in charge of understanding the science behind it all. All we knew was the bare, stripped down truth: they were curing us, slowly but surely. I couldn't quite remember what, but I’d been forgetting many things lately. It didn't seem important. 

“Hey, tiny!”

A burly guy, with scars shining cobalt on his skin, slammed a hand on the back of my shoulder. I looked up at Josh, wincing from the pain. “Hey.” I could see the thin remains of a manic look in his eye, fading slowly from view. The veins in his hand were vanishing as he tightened his grip on my arm.

“They inject you in the hand?” Josh asked. Clearly he was some type of bored, if he was talking to me instead of all the other guys in this sector of the facility.

“Neck.”

“Then what’s with the bruising?” Josh indicated the smooth pattern of crimson spots climbing up the skin of my palm. 

“Oh!” I gazed at the injury in confusion. It hadn’t been there only seconds before, I was sure of it. “Uh, it’s just from a few days ago. Slow healing process, that’s all.”

When Josh left, I carefully inspected every part of my hand. Sure enough, the skin was peeling off in little clumps, revealing raw skin underneath. Was it…spreading? But no. That couldn't be true. It was likely exactly what I’d said—just a small side effect. Soon, the elections would buzz under my skin and new flesh would spread over the deadened one. It would be as good as new.

I spent the rest of the day lying in bed, fighting consciousness. Nobody else was in my ward except for me, though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen anyone else on one of the beds lined up in a long row. I knew which one was mine, though, because of the pill bottle next to it. They refilled it every day. Or maybe I did. I used to know, but that didn’t seem like something I had to know, so I’d forgotten it.

I shut my eyes. Blood was pouring from all of my pores, leaking from my eyelids, spilling out onto the carpet. Red. So much red. Shouts, screams. Bits of flesh flying up in the air like confetti at a child’s birthday party. A pinata raised on a platform, all limp feet and lifeless eyes. A girl standing at the edge of a horizon, her body streaked with paint. I opened them again. Nothing but air. 

Hours had passed. I’d been stuck in there for so long that time seemed irrelevant. There was blood on the sheets and on my shirt and on my lips. I could taste it. Salty, and a little bit metallic. It was draining from my nose, of all things.

I could vaguely remember what the doctors had told me the first time I complained about the little girl with the fiery red hair who kept infiltrating my dreams: something about how the injections were going to stifle that. Sitting up, I picked up the bottle on my bedside table and swallowed exactly three pills. Anytime my sleep was disrupted, I swallowed them. They’d given them to me after they realized that, for some reason, those nightmares were the one thing the injections couldn’t heal.

Time passed quickly here—so quickly it seemed to never pass at all. Two seconds, two months, two years—it was all the same. The routine was the same, too: we stand in a line, we’re injected, we sleep peacefully, we sit peacefully, we walk until our knees give out, and so on and so forth. Again and again and again. It’s a very pleasant place—you can tell by the smiles. So many smiles. There are signs on every door and the intersection of every hallway, but they sport nothing more than ink drawn on white paper. I can’t read it.

Why can’t I read it?

One day, I stumbled down a hallway and found myself in an unfamiliar area, many corridors away from the office where I was supposed to be administered my shot. If I was even a little bit late, they would get angry, so I’d have to get going. I used to know this place like the back of my hand—they must have taught it to me some time ago—but I’d begun to forget it. Now, only hazy images of random rooms erupted in my mind. The rest was nonexistent, foggy at most. I caught sight of a sign.

STORAGE. Somehow, I knew I should have been able to read what it said, but I couldn't. I hadn’t been able to in a long time. Maybe it was just another side effect. “St-or-ray-g,” I recited, attempting to read it out. No. “Storage.” From here, it was only one or two turns before I arrived at my ward, and by then, it was merely a walk down a hallway to the doctor’s. 

That night, I closed my eyes and once again saw blood, clean cut and arranged in shapes along the ground. The little girl was tracing her fingers through the wreckage, drawing little smiles in the dirt. She’d have liked it here, with all the happy people. In the shadows, she appeared almost to be an omen. A guard. A decoy, a trap that I stumbled into every single time.

As always, I woke up and picked up the bottle. This time, my eyes adjusted to the words printed on the label. Slowly, my mouth growing numb by the second, I sounded out the words. “Ny-tree-ly-um.” The syllables were heavy and unfamiliar, weighted on my tongue. Maybe it was the name of the company that made it? Or the chemicals within it, the ones that stopped all my nightmares? Except I couldn’t remember the last time it actually worked. There was another word printed out underneath it, but I couldn’t read it no matter how hard I tried.

I asked the doctor the next time I saw him, the bottle cradled in my left hand. “What’s ny-tree-ly-um?” My tongue shifted from side to side in my mouth.

“Nothing you need to worry your little head about,” the doctor responded absentmindedly as he fiddled with the needle. “Just a name of something. Now hold still.”

“What’s your name?”

The doctor stopped, only inches before the needle pierced the skin. “What?”

“Your name. The word people call you.”

“No idea.” He twisted my head to the side and a droplet of blood leaked down my skin, staining it. “What’s yours?”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I don’t remember.”

Outside, I began my walk down the long white hallway. Everybody else was dressed in the same color, rows upon rows of angels lining up for…for something. Everybody’s eyes were blank, colorless, faded. Mine were too by now—maybe that’s why the world looked so dead.

“It’s a drug.”

I stopped. The voice was familiar—rough, polished at the edges. The voice of a man who knew something I didn’t. Something they stole from me, many years ago. “A what?” I asked.

Josh turned his head to the side, revealing lines of burns that not even the injection could fix. Somehow, I knew its limits. His eyes were rabid, hungry. “Nytralium. It messes with your head.” He could barely speak, and saliva the color of blood leaked from his ruined teeth. “Causes amnesia. But the more you use it, the less it works.”

“You’re lying.”

“Never. They used it on people who’d seen things everybody else thought they shouldn’t. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” He grinned at my horror.

My body began to shake. I hurried down the hallway, fingering the bottle in my left hand. I tried to shift through my memories, but so many of the pages were blank. I’d vomited sometime today, but I’d forgotten it. How many of those pills had I taken? How many were left?

“Those don’t have the nytralium,” Josh called from behind me. I could hear his voice disappearing. He was struggling to breath, I could sense it. If I were someone more noble, maybe I would’ve looked back. Maybe I would’ve pulled him from the hell he’d crawled into, but hell wasn’t real and for some reason he didn’t matter all that much.

“Yes they do.”

“The second word, the one you can’t read, it says treatment.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “They don’t like that word. It makes it seem like something’s wrong.”

Nytralium treatment. Treatment for what? As if subconsciously, I raised a trembling hand to the scarring on the side of my neck, to the miniscule, almost imperceptible holes that dotted it like a child’s painting. She was a side effect. They knew she’d haunt me. They just hoped I wouldn't remember her face.

Josh began to laugh hysterically. “You know, the world will be happy once we’re dead and buried.” Every syllable was stretched out in a happy shriek. “I just can’t remember why!”

That couldn’t be true. He was lying. They’d told us-

What had they told us? It suddenly occurred to me that I never could quite remember when this all began. Where did this all come from? These walls, were they always this color? Was that sterilized smell always there? Was the taste of metal always filling my mouth?

The young girl with the crimson red hair stood at the edge of the facility hallways, unsmiling. Every time she moved forward, another little piece of my soul flickered away to nothing. There was a gaping wound in her forehead, so circular it was admirable. Whoever did it must’ve had good aim.

She blinked at me. I still couldn't remember her name, and she was angry at the thought. She clutched my face like it was nothing more than a plastic toy, and cracked the surface of the skin the way a squirrel cracks a walnut. I stumbled backwards. No more. Please. No more. Swinging forcefully into a wall, my back made contact with a door. I pushed. It opened. I fell. The sun stared back up at me. Or, no, not the sun. Something better. Newer. A brilliantly flickering light in an otherwise really crummy bathroom.

Shuddering, I got to my feet. Red. I could see red. Horrified, I stumbled over to the mirror.

Blood fell in long streams from my nose, dribbling onto the edge of the sink. It stained my cheeks, my lips, my fingers. Shuddering against the wall, I collapsed. Letting out a harsh cough into my right palm, I looked up to see blood splattered along my hands. It was leaking from my mouth too, then. The dark spots had continued, spreading up to my left hand now. 

I’d shot her. Sixteen years ago, I shot her. And they’d all tried to stop me from paying the price.

I don’t remember what happened next.