The Grinders, Part VI

"The Grinders, Part V" 

"Wake up!"

I leapt off my bed and banged painfully to the floor. The dentist and my mother were gone. All the workers were gone. A red-headed man in a white suit hovered over me. He yelled, "Get up now!"

"I had a nightmare. My dent--"

"Shut up and get up!"

I stood up, dressed, and moved to the common area with the other patients. The television was in the center of the room, its screen filled with static. I gazed at the static for several minutes, and I began to see shapes taking form.

I concentrated on the static, wondering what images my mind could find. Fragments of white and black flowed and seemed to make eddies. I could almost see a hurricane off a peninsula. After glancing at the patients, the view changed. Now I saw a waterfall. A more coherent image gradually formed in the static. What was once an amorphous whirlpool was now a rigid tunnel.

Suddenly, I felt a surge of pain in my foot; my blood seeped into the rug. A tack was in my toe. I pulled it out, and I looked around the room. I noticed another tack sticking out of the floor. Then I saw another. I realized that tacks were everywhere on the carpet. I don't know how I could have missed seeing them before. As patients and doctors walked, they somehow missed stepping on them by inches. I knew that if I tried to walk, there would be no way for me to avoid the tacks.

I turned my attention back to the television. The tunnel was still there. It filled my view and it seemed like I was being led through it. I reached the end of the tunnel, and saw a sheer vertical shaft. A shriveled body fell through the shaft, and my eyes followed him down. A headband attached a pair of broken teeth to his lifeless forehead. The view disappeared, and was replaced with a scene of myself trying to awaken my father from a trance. The two of us were arrested, and led together into the back of a black police truck.

The view buckled. The image folded up on itself, collapsed on its own weight, and was smeared everywhere. I watched it degenerate further until it was nothing more than white and black pixels flashing on a TV screen.

When I looked away from the television, I saw a doctor glaring at me menacingly. He tilted his head, and turned his eyes. I followed his eyes to the corner of the room, to the steel door.


THE END