I am a rat in a cage, folks.

Cue the eerie 1980’s synthesizer background music because the next few weeks are a blurry montage of nightmarish horrors:

My body is every mad scientist’s wet dream come to life.

Half the time I’m sprawled out on operating tables, strapped down so they can poke and prod with no opposition. I wake up day after day sore in places I shouldn’t be. I find I’m missing bits of skin from random areas. My hands look like they’ve been microwaved, cut up, and stitched back together. Nothing seems to hinder my ability to make things disappear, however.

Sometimes they pump me full of drugs. It’s a different cocktail every time. Sometimes they want me crisp and sober. They’re constantly taking my blood. They take so much I’m half convinced they’re vampires.

They love to put me in tanks and containers for some reason. They don’t tell me why. In fact they don’t talk to me much anymore, despite my constant questions and quips. Browning, Jim, and the Asian woman are always there, but they’re in the periphery now. They just observe and tell people what to do. The majority of what I see now are lab coats and army men.

Once, I almost sparked up a conversation with this little Filipino man. I almost had him convinced that if he doesnt help me escape, I can use my alien telepathy powers to crush his testicles. Almost being the key word there.

I’m power washed, doused with chemicals and what look like radioactive materials. I’m covered in goo and locked in containers or small rooms and left there for hours.

I really do think these people have some sort of collective isolation fetish with me.

I see more green crystals now. Lots more. They’re everywhere. They’re involved in almost everything we do in some capacity.

I get escorted around a lot. Down this hallway, down that hallway. Sometimes they drag me if I'm being obstinate. Sometimes they prod me from behind at taser point. When I can’t stand they put me in a wheelchair, or wheel me around on gurneys.

I find myself losing the will to fight.

I feel like I’m losing weight and muscles.

I’m becoming more and more malleable, quicker to acquiesce. Maybe it’s the drugs, or maybe they’re just slowly breaking me down. I think both.

I’m a rat in a cage in a maze.

Hallway after hallway after hallway.

At least the sandwiches are still good … when I have the will and ability to eat.

The rooms are different everyday. How many rooms are down here?

I’m blasted with sounds, with heat, with freezing cold liquids. It’s dark, it’s light, it’s dim, it’s seering bright.

My hands. They do so many weird things to my hands. Lots of needles and surgical robot arms. There’s this one machine that just sucks on them, like some sort of octopus orifice. It makes this disgusting smacking sound I can’t get out of my head.

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They make me practice my curse. Yes, I’m calling it a curse now.

They bring in an orangutan, a chicken, a dog, and countless other animals and creeping things. They have me vanish a horse while sitting on it ... naked. They have me do two goats at once. They bring in a nearly brain dead person. They bring in a fully dead, fully intact human corpse. They bring in a body that’s been dug up and decomposed. One of the lab coats tell me that soon they’ll have a live volunteer, a convict on death for me to test on.

The one’s I’m successful with never come back. The ones I’m not, they always come back. I can’t control when a rejected part reappears, but now I can feel when they are about to reappear more easily.

The spider never comes back—thankfully. Neither does Bill. I hope the poor guy is okay. I feel bad about him. He seemed nice. The hand comes back, of course, and so does the bunny, which was fine, save for a missing foot they stitched back on. Or, at least they told me they did. I’d hate to think there’s a cute bunny hobbling around out there because of me.

The bigger they are the harder it is to send them. My emotions become less of a factor as I learn to concentrate and visualize. If I lose concentration, or I don’t secure a solid connection prior to sending, it can disrupt the process and literally sever the intended biological. The more I do it the more exhausted I get until I can’t stand on my own two feet anymore.

I still have no idea where they go. If Bill ever comes back, I’ll be sure to ask him.

At one point I have so many tubes and wires protruding out of my skin I feel like a violated bowl of spaghetti.

I’m constantly smothered by so many electronics I hear the beeping of machines and monitors in my sleep now.

I weep. I laugh uncontrollably. I find myself randomly shaking. Puking becomes a daily ritual. I’m under water for hours at a time suspended in vast darkness. At times I wake up in the night gasping for air.

I’m naked on the floor. I’m locked in a tight container banging on the walls to be let out.

Needle, needle, poke, poke poke.

At one point I feel like a pendulum, swinging back and forth upside down. At another point I feel like I’m suspended in space. Although that could have been an acid trip. One day, I’m convinced I’ve gone blind and deaf until they turn the lights on and pull me out of a heavily padded room and pull all the sensory blockers off me.

I cried that day. A long, good cry in the shower.

I endure countless MRI’s and CT scans, and a number of other long tedious tests that require me to hold still and dwell on my wrong doings.

Days blur into each other. How long have I been down here? At least two … three weeks?

Then … it all halts.

Three days go by and no one comes to get me from my room. My guess is they want to analyze the data they’ve collected before gathering more. Or they’re just sick of dealing with me.

Neither would surprise me.

I’m laying in bed one night when suddenly … I have to poop.

I pull myself out of bed and stumble over to the bathroom and close the door behind me.

The one nice amenity I have is my bathroom. There’s no lock on it, no mirror, but I can close the door for privacy and it has a small overhead light I can control. It’s pretty much the only thing I have control over in my life anymore. And I’m pretty sure there’s no camera in here.

Almost positive.

After I finish, I spin the toilet paper roll, tear off about ten squares, and carefully fold them one by one because I'm anal like that (wink). Just as I'm about to wipe, I hear a voice.

“Can you do that with your other hand please?”

I freeze.

“Because, frankly, that’s disgusting.”

I blink.

Slowly, tentatively, I drop the toilet paper and look at my right hand.

Those drugs must still be messing with me because my scar on my palm now looks like a pair of weird shaped lips.

“Hello, Jack,” says the lips, then smiles. Well, one could possibly interpret it as a smile if you held it at just the right angle and in just the right light.

I jump off the toilet in a panic and find myself tangled in the shower curtain. I trip and fall into the tub. The pole holding the curtain collapses and lands on my head.