Thursday, June 02, 2005

Needles. Three and one half inch long needles. Twelve of them. In my spine. Or rather, they were in my spine, about two hours ago. How this is supposed to help my persistant back pain, I haven't the foggiest idea, but I submitted to it nevertheless. It was my second session, actually. I even payed for the privilage.

The scent of death is not decay, but rather the sour aromatic chemicals used to expunge pathogens from skin, steel, and linoleum. I lay quivering on the padded table, holding my breath against the creeping of their latexed hands. I lay cold, swaddled in paper, feeling as if I were already dead. They cleaned the skin over my spine.

I saw the delicate filiment of steel streak against his bloodless palm. He held it by the glass syringe, fingers over the little black hash-marks, thumb on the plunger. The needle drew his hand threw the still air, into my skin, down through the muscle, and into the bone. It's tip nestled and sang against the bad nerve.

His thumb pressed the plunger. I gasped at the pressure of fluid against the bad joint - a jet of anesthetic roaring through the ruined alcove between skin and spinal cord. The needle retreated. He began again, two inches farther down the spine.

It hurts. It hurts so much now, I want to cry. I want to cry all night, but there's no one left in town to hear me. The scent has yet to leave me. I still smell of death

shiny objects