The Mind Tomb

It’s dark. No light can penetrate the suffocating blanket of inky navy blue. Swirls of imaginary color expand and recede in your wide, unblinking eyes. There’s a faint vibration beneath you, but your body is numb, immobilized and unable to uncover the source of the consistent tremor. You’re naked, completely disrobed, and a cold panic seeps into your bones; or maybe that’s just the mysterious environment surrounding you.

Sudden, piercing light appears, expanding in your ocular as though a visor were being lifted. You want to close your eyes against the harsh, blinding light, but the membranes refuse to slide closed at your command.

A blurry figure looms over you, slowly coming into focus as they lean down, examining you. Their face is carefully neutral, not the demonic grin you have come to expect from the horror movies you’ve seen. They move along, completely ignoring the fact that you are conscious, and run gloved hands along your stomach, probing unsolicited.

You try to call out for help, but nothing happens; your muscles have been effectively frozen by whatever they have given you. The prodding hands retreat and the figure disappears from your field of view, leaving you staring blankly at a stark white ceiling. What are they going to do to you? What do they want with you?

These questions remained unanswered, seeing as you cannot voice them, and no one is inclined to monologue them for you, as so many psychopaths on TV seem to be. The figure – a man, you realize – returns, accompanied by a put together-looking female, long, strawberry-blonde hair tied up professionally in a high ponytail.

She looks down at you through opaque glasses, and out of the corner of your eye you see a flash of silver. The man with the gloves has a scalpel, and he slices deftly through your stomach. You want to scream, terror seizing your unresponsive body as he sticks his hand inside of you, reaching down into your intestines.

Finally, horrifyingly, he extracts his hand from your abdomen, bringing with it a fistful of cartilage. You want to vomit, you would vomit, but you are helpless, entirely at the clemency of the whim of the strangers standing over you.

You want to scream, but your pleas for mercy are trapped as thoroughly within your body as you are.

“This is what severed the victim’s spinal cord.” The man sets the glob of cartilage on a metal table, uncovering a broken length of serrated metal. The woman leans forward, examining the object carefully, pen poised at the ready above a crisp notepad.

“Where did the weapon enter the victim, Professor?” The woman shifts her lab coat subtly, nervous about asking the wrong question. The Professor smiles reassuringly and gestures to the underside of your body.

“The entrance wound penetrates three inches to the left of the spine, breaking at the hilt six inches into the torso, slicing the spinal cord cleanly as it did so.” The woman scrawls furiously, glasses sliding slowly down the bridge of her nose. “Do you follow the chain of motion?”

“Yes sir.” The woman nods determinedly, and the Professor swiftly removes his gloves, discarding them into a nearby medical waste bin. He grasps the handle of the drawer, rolling you back into the complete oblivion of the morgue.