The Cell
I wake on a cold hard stone floor.
Dripping in the distance.
Rats scurrying around me.
I am bound by my hands and feet.
There is a single barred window high up on one wall.
It is night outside.
I can’t see the door or the walls, but if I stretch out I can reach both ends of the room.
I let out a sigh.
I don’t know where I am.
They’ve won.
We are all doomed.
I black out.
The hands grab me, lift me up.
I’m moving.
I open my eyes.
The ceiling moves. It is bright.
I think I’m on a stretcher.
A white gloved hand presses down on my chest.
I follow the arm up.
The back of a head, white hospital headgear covering skin.
I groan.
The face turns around, obscured by the hospital mask.
It is pink, fleshy, normal.
I sigh with relief.
The bottom of the stretcher bangs open some double doors.
I glance around.
Some kind of emergency room.
The white gloved hand comes off my chest.
I try to stop it.
I am handcuffed to the stretcher.
I try and move my other hand.
Pain shoots up my arm.
I look at my hand.
It is purple and blue and black, bruised and swollen. The hand hangs limply off the shattered wrist.
‘You’ve been in quite the fight,’ comes a sickly-sweet voice.
A silhouette appears over my face.
I can see shocking pink hair.
‘We’ll have you patched up in no time,’ she says.
Two more silhouettes appear next to her.
‘I’m Nurse Joy,’ says the first shape, ‘and my assistants today are Mr Mime and Chansey.’
A white gloved hand reaches up and pulls the mask down from its face.
Now I can see them.
The smiling face of the nurse with the shocking pink hair.
The hideous grin and rosy pink cheeks of the clown Pokémon.
The empty, dead black eyes of the shorter, pink balloon Pokémon.
The white gloved hand comes towards my face.
I squirm.
The nurse holds me down.
The white gloved hand places a mask over my nose and mouth.
‘Just breathe deeply,’ says Nurse Joy. ‘Imagine you’re a pilot.’
The dead eyes of the Pokémon gaze down hatefully at my helpless body.
I wake again on the floor of the cell.
It is dark again.
I move my hand.
I can’t feel it.
The hand is in a crude wooden split to keep it straight.
Something wet on my leg.
I can’t see it.
I move my working hand down to it.
Something crawling, moving.
I snatch it up.
A purple bug.
A Wurmple.
I crush it in my hand.
Goddamn Pokémon.
The Online Portfolio of Adam Mason 