Bound For

Une nouvelle nano originale - An original nanostory

I awake suddenly, with the foggy residue of unnatural sleep. Very unnatural. The room is dark with a faint ozone smell. But not entirely dark, and not entirely ozone. A stale, sickly-sweet cigar tobacco lingers clumsily in the room, as does a dull, throbbing orange that otherwise couldn’t pass for light.

The fog thins ever so slightly. My move to get up is met with restraints. Must be leather. I struggle to think. And to feel. No touch of sense is available to me.

Thick white fog becomes gray fog now.  Something in my hand. No, there is something TAPED to my hand. The palm of my right hand. Unmovable fingers wrapped around a cylinder. My unmovable fingers.

A dull metal clink is followed by “The first tip is free. The others you’ll have to earn.”

I startle at these words, intoned as much as spoken. My heart leaps to my throat. “The tip is this. Don’t do anything rash.”

The gray fog evaporates.

My right thumb moves! There is a button. Hospital? A call button!

Without hesitation I press the button. It resists for a moment, hanging mid-heartbeat, then plunges grittily to its full depth.

My left arm lights up in heat.

Not entirely heat. Heat with a tingle. A moving tingle. Moving fast. Up my arm. Moving through my shoulder now, the tingle is a distinct sensation.

A wavefront moving with determination. Leaving a rope of fire behind it. Forcefully dragged, veinally. By force of heartbeat.

This realization marks the moment. This invasive rush disappears into my heart.

This is the end? Why?

Then fire erupts in my chest, pushed forcefully by my racing heart. The blaze loops up. Into my neck. Carried arterially. In a flash I sense it reaching the back of my head.

An iron door of blackness falls suddenly, silently, completely.