Chapter Text
The loud noise of a door being slammed shut snapped him out of his slumber. He was usually a light sleeper and alert in an instant. But this time his eyes felt heavy. His head was cloudy and his thoughts sluggish.
He managed to drag open his right eyelid only to quickly close it again. A very bright crystal lamp, the light a harsh blueish white seemed to be directed right unto his face. He blinked a few times, trying to get used to the glare.
He realized that he was lying down.
This was odd.
Hadn’t he just been outside of the Butcher’s Yard theater, leaning against an outer wall and listening in on the play?
He heard footsteps approaching.
He tried to sit up, but his arms weren’t moving, his chest was blocked by something and his legs constricted.
Shackles?
What was going on?
Panic started to rise in his chest, bubbling up and constricting his throat, making him breathe harder. He tried to get out of the leather straps around his wrists, but each pull and tug was to no avail.
He felt the hard surface under himself, maybe stone or metal, as cold sweat started to build up on his neck, making his shirt moist and clinging to his skin.
He stopped in his struggles as the footsteps could be heard again, stopping at his head.
“Where am I? Why am I here?” he asked pleadingly. His voice sounded small in his ears. “Why am I tied to this table?”
“Patient nineteen is awake and speaking clearly. No slurring suggests the patient had no concussion during treatment initiation,” a clinical voice stated.
“How old are you, nineteen?”
“My name is Tobey!”
“And now it is nineteen. Age?”
“Se-Seventeen, I think?”, Tobey stuttered, getting even more afraid when he saw something like a knife glint out of the corner of his right eye. “Wh-what are you doing to me? What’s going on?”
The figure in the leather apron busied himself with something right beside his head, metal tools clinking together, as they were sorted and rearranged. Then there was the sound of paper and a quill scratching over it. Then cold fingers were pressed under his chin. He felt his quick pulse beating under the icy digits.
Some more note-taking.
Silence. The only sound was Tobey’s heavy breathing, which seemed to be unbearably loud to his own ears. All the while, he tried to get out of the restrictions, pushing and pulling his hands this way and that. But to no avail. The straps were too tight and secure.
“I noticed your eye patch,” the cold clinical voice replied after a while. “Let’s do something about it, shall we? I never operated on an eye before. This could be fun.”
“A-are you a doctor? Please, let me go.”
Tobey let his functioning eye fly over what he could see, which wasn’t much, for the light was concentrated on him and didn’t reach much further. He did however see the outlines of some storage shelves, filled with glasses. He quickly looked away when he noticed that the contents of those looked less like pickles and more like organs, a hand and a foot. His gaze landed on a big desk filled with small metal constructs. Beside the desk stood a big wooden chair, reinforced with steel.
There were straps on the armrests.
And blood sprinkles on the seat.
This was no doctor.
Tobey’s heart began to race.
The quill stopped scratching.
“Previous illnesses?” the cold voice asked.
Tobey shook his head, not as much out of answering the question but as a desperate plea to stop. He felt tears of helplessness gather in the corner of his eyes.
“I prefer my patients under anesthesia, but in this particular case, the procedure will be very close to the brain. Nineteen needed responsive and awake. Horribly distracting. Next patient needs to be picked more carefully. Maybe an organ transplant?”
“Please. Please let me go,” pleaded Tobey, his voice small and shaky.
The voice ignored him. Then a hand holding tongs closed in on his face and hovered over his bad eye.
“Starting procedure.”
Then, the only sound left was screaming.