the cold.

i was driving my mother’s car through dark precipitation. the air was heavy, and it was still sinking. i rounded a bend, pulled into a large driveway, and froze. pain overtook me, an inescapable cold pierced through my skin and bones. i could not scream.

and then it was gone. i made myself get out of the car and entered the main building to the huge estate—an entire neighborhood was part of someone’s fifty-acre property.

i ran up the wide, old oak stairs to the attic where i was told my room was. the attic was massive and had four beds, each on a level that was one step down from the floor level. the beds were queen sized and had yellow sheets on all of them. lamps poking out of the walls gave the attic a calm yellow glow. the cream carpet covered the floor, but i could not feel it. after the cold had caused my nerves so much distress, i did not physically feel anything anymore. nothing but the agonizing cold.

a friend of mine ran up to me, grinning, stating that she wanted the bed that i was currently looking at. i smiled, because i had not chosen that one, i was only sizing up the windows. i turned to a bed at the corner of the room, lower than the rest, that had tall windows for a wall. i decided it would be mine.

another friend, a very dear past friend, asked me to come to their place to visit her and two others. i agreed hastily, for i had not seen them in years. i ran over, not wearing shoes, re-playing a forewarning that the temperatures outside were low enough to kill. i swiftly made my way over there, my heart racing, knowing that if i had spent any more time in the cold i would have been dead.

my dear friend and i shared a long embrace. she looked older somehow, as if she had matured to an age that her body did not fully suit. “everyone says they like it better this way,” she remarked, meaning her hair cut. i agreed.

i was informed that i was at this place to be part of a study that was being conducted in one of the buildings. newsflashes and headlines from the paper blinked in front of me. there was an experiment on human beings going on here.

i walked through a gigantic refrigerator. above me, beside me, all around me, emaciated human bodies hung from the ceiling, their stringy skin stretched on hooks. i could see muscle and tendon from their ripped open bellies and chests.

then there was ben. he was an eastern man who had died, but was now being kept alive through various tubes and hoses entering the stretched pieces of skin. his eyes were wide, lidless, and staring blankly at nothing. everyone that was staying on the estate disagreed strongly with what the scientists were doing to him. we wanted benny to be treated as humanely as possible—we wanted him to stay dead.

i dropped down to my knees and roared at the scientists who stood at the entrance of the experiment building. a friend of mine joined me. i felt a crowd of people behind me, growing in voice and number, and as the sun began to cast its pale shadows against the ivory victorian buildings, we chased the scientists back into their lab.