Chapter Text
I woke up and couldn’t move. That was wrong. I remembered moving before. I kicked against the hands that had tried to trap me, I struggled against the bodies that attempted to force me to be immobile, but in the end I couldn't muster the strength needed to throw them off and now I was awake motionless.
My limbs were bound to my side and I shouldn’t be able to move, yet I could. I felt things all around me. Cold, smooth, fake, and warm. I wished that wasn’t the only strange thing, but as soon as I grew to understand what I could feel, other senses flowed in.
Many different somethings were on my tongue and they were incomprehensible. A revolting combination of smells registered. Fruit, sterilization, trash, and false pine. I had my eyes shut tight, but light was still getting through to an alarming degree. It was like wherever I was had a floodlight pointing directly at me.
In spite of that light, I could still register being surrounded by stars. Little tiny blips, but they were overtaken by my senses going haywire.
All throughout, the noise never ended. It was unlike anything I heard before. It wasn't the sound of music or talking or yelling or roaring. It wasn't cars or trains or construction or screaming. There was no logic to it, but it was everywhere. And it never. Fucking. Stopped.
Comparatively, the searing lights or the uncanny feeling of moving-but-not were better. That wasn’t a comfort.
Sometimes the noise lessened, but that was like saying the heat from being inside a burning building was less than being next to the Sun. True, but it didn't really change the fact that I was being incinerated.
Like anyone caught in the middle of a fire, I screamed. I screamed and I screamed as if the sound of my own voice would drown out the incessant noise. I wasn't even sure if I could hear myself as my voice began to taper off into a whimper. That scared me more. The idea of not being able to hear anything else because of the never-ending noise.
Yet no matter how much I screamed and whimpered no one helped me. It was hell. I was dead and in hell. People were moving around me, standing by me and not letting me out. Was I not worth the time, the effort?
It was only when I asked these questions to myself did the noise seem to lessen for a moment, before ramping up in ways I didn't know were possible. That wasn't saying much though because I still couldn't parse out what the noise was.
I figured out I was in a hospital, eventually. At one point, in the middle of my screaming, I managed to open my eyes long enough to register a white lab coat. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to connect the idea of a lab coat to a doctor. And if that person was a doctor, then I was strapped down to a hospital bed. Hence, I was in a hospital. But why?
Had I gone insane? Was I a threat or being treated as such? My panic made the noise shift and change and almost respond, but it never did and it never stopped.
I wanted it to stop. If I was in a hospital then that meant I could get better. Mom never made it to the hospital. I could get better. I tried to put every part of my being into making the noise stop, but it didn't. I kept trying. I wanted to tame whatever this was and make it my own. If I had to hear the noise, then it would be because I wanted to.
Then, the noise almost lowered. Not quite like using a remote to lower the volume of a TV, but I could hear out of my own ears again. And what I heard made me cry, I think. The only reason why I wasn't sure was because I didn't know if I had already been crying or if I had ever stopped. The blue pants, the nurse shifted towards me and said my name.
I didn't hear what she said next, but it didn't matter. I wasn't being ignored, not anymore. They said my name and they were here to help me. All I had to do was master this noise. This sight, this smell, this taste, this feeling. I had to take control of all these little stars and make them stop burning me.
I reached out and focused on the closest one. I felt the wall against my legs, despite not being able to move from the bed. Then I tried the other senses of the tiny star and found they were too much.
The smell was impossible, the taste was vile, the noise was ludicrous, and the sight was bewildering. I focused on the touch, the feel, and was instantly freaked out more than I ever was by the ever-changing colors that I had seen through what I now realized were eyes that weren't my own. The star had legs, too many legs. The star had antennae and what kind of star had antennae? The star had wings, but they weren't the kind that fulfilled long-lost dreams of taking to the skies with a costume and cape.
I took command of the thing that I still held out hope was a star, even if what made up my hope was more so delusion, and had it move. It crawled over and I focused on my ears again. My own ears. I couldn't hear words, even if I knew they were spoken, but I heard a noise from the nurse who had been watching me. It sounded like something, then another noise coincided with the loss of the not-star. A slam and a crunch.
I looked again, not with my eyes, but with my sixth-sense that allowed me to see the not-stars. There were so many. Hundreds, thousands, more. All in a hospital and its surroundings. I almost went insane again, because what kind of superpower was being able to control bugs?