The Hand That Moves Me

:31. 

I glance at the clock again, the red lights blaring. It seeps into my skin, the dullness carving itself deep into my bones. A screech comes from out there, where I am doomed to follow.

An ache spreading across my flesh, tearing skin off the frame that upholds me… but not currently, as I swing, suspended upside down from a hook. 

Gearwork above me cranks, levers being pulled and movement simulated as my body gets pushed forward, the brightness coming ever closer, approaching from outside the dark room. 

The pain around me vibrates, shifting from an arm to my legs to the space between my nose and eyes. A drill-like sound reverberates in my head, pushing up and out as the cogs turn and turn. 

A loud horn rattles the pipes above me, sending shudders along my spine as, once again, I’m propelled forward. My mouth opens and shuts. No item for speech. 

Elongated, spindly machinery weaves itself down in front of me, grasping at the space ahead. Clanks echo in the dark, dull room as its false hand moves closer and closer to me. 

:31. 

Oh god, how can this still be happening? Still hooked here, suspended in mid-air. Waiting for a countdown that seems to never cease. What is out there on the other side? What waits in an unknown scope? 

The alarm sounds again as I’m flung forward towards the bright rectangular screen at the front. My mouth is wrenched open, sharpened steel sticking into the sides of my cheeks, splattering blood across my teeth.

A long, hollow tube is forced into my throat. A raspy, begging cry is dragged out of my larynx, sucking a sticky substance up the pipe. The dry, scratchy invasion begins to hollow me out from the inside. Taking, taking, taking. Never stopping and never thinking. Just theft straight from the source.

I can feel it on the inside, digging itself through the sinew, tunnelling left and right as it rummages around. Sharpened, mechanical teeth gnaw at my stomach, burrowing further inside.

:31.

Still the gears move, crank, alarms blast. Spine-shattering movement drones on, pulsating around my body as it grips and pulls. The extraction process continues with deafening fervour, a desperation to steal every single image, idea, thought. All elements of creativity are stripped away in a swift process.

The sharpened blades dig, claw, and scratch through my intestines, digging further and deeper into my body. The screams I wish to make are stuck there, somewhere out in the boundless ether — a space I cannot reach, as the talons reach towards my heart. The centre of it all. 

As I feel myself slip from the hook, a lesser version than before, everything becomes a painful blank as I fall down into the cavernous pit. The dull ache of loss sits in my body awkwardly, something not where it should be.

Before collapsing in a heap of corpses, I see words and digits splayed across the big, bright screen, blinking back at me. The words gutted from my body, before leaving me to lie useless on a pile of nothings.