Body Parts

I woke up with a bright light blinding my eyes. I tried to move but my arms were pinned down. I kicked and shifted against leather straps around my ankles. My back humped and banged against a cold metal table. I cried out and found that my mouth was gagged, my head strapped as well.
         Where am I?
         A silence fell over me and I listened. My breathing was heavy and I could feel the sweat forming over my skin. I was cold, naked. Darkness surrounded me, a darkness of noise and sight.
         Slowly, to my left, a shadow moved. I jumped in surprise, forgetting I was tied down. A man emerged from the darkness wearing a surgical mask and gloves. He wore a dark vinyl apron with streaks of liquid reflecting the light above my head. An eerie glow in his eyes.
         He looked at me as one might look at a farm animal. No remorse or feeling of empathy.
         How did I get here?
         Who was this man?
         Questions I could not answer were ablaze in my head. I tried to think back on my last memory but it was like looking through frosted glass. I had been drugged. I felt tired, but wide awake.
         The man tilted his face at me and brought a big-gloved hand to my head.
         “You have beautiful hands.” Was all he ever said to me.
         He ran his hand down my face and across my chest. I struggled under the straps and muffled a scream. It was to no avail. The man possessed no compassion. His eyes told me to be quiet as his hand moved up to his mouth. His forefinger pointing at the sky, his lips pursing and pulling the doctors mask from his face.
         He turned away from me and I scrambled. My mind raced. I looked around through squinted eyes to find a way out of this. My memory faded back in and I saw my wife. I was married. Yes, I remember. I have children with her. A son. I have a son.
         I looked back and the man was standing over me again. His right arm up, hand holding what looked like a small silver saw. I screamed again. This one shocked him I think because he jumped slightly. He looked away for only a second, but in that time, I knew I had shaken him.
         I could not see what happened next, but I felt all of it.
         The man bent down and I could feel the soft, gripping feel of rubber on the soft under side of my wrist. He pulled the skin back towards my elbow and suddenly my jaw clenched and I roared through my teeth and gag.
         Sharp metal teeth dug and bit into my arm. Hot oozing liquid poured into my palm and over my fingers. Nerves screamed through my body as the saw tore them away.
         Just as suddenly as the pain had begun, it ended. I made the effort to look.
My own hand, waving at me.
         I could not connect it at first. It looked fake, like a Halloween prop dipped in fake blood.
         The man turned away again and when he turned back, he held the end of a coke could. It had a small metal handle welded to one side. It was slid slowly over my wound. Again the man turned, only to produce a small butane torch.
         I screamed at him again through gritted teeth.
         The blue flame was applied to the end of the can and almost immediately I could feel it burning.
He was cauterizing my arm. The intensity was so extreme I tried to make myself pass out, but to no avail. I was stuck in the torture.
         When it was over, I cried. Not from the pain, but from the unknown. What was he going to do with me? Take me apart piece by piece? I thought I might never see my wife again. I thought about my son. And I wept.
         I was left alone for what seemed like hours. The silence piercing my brain. I thought about my wife and son. Slowly as waking from a dream my life came flooding back to me. My friends, my family all of them were standing around me. Get out of here, John. I could hear them distinctly.
         I struggled and twisted and realized that without a hand I could easily slip my arm from the strap. I pulled, pushing my shoulder close to my neck,, straining against the burn of the leather pulling across my wounded skin. I strained.
         My arm was free. I held it in front of my face in disbelief. I could feel my hand, but it was no longer attached. I used my wrist to slide the leather strap over my right arm through its buckle. It slid out easily enough, but the metal arm pushed through the hole held it fast. I bent the leather down and against the hard metal table. Twisting my right arm upwards the little metal arm came closer and closer to popping out of the hole in the strap.
         I was getting tired, my eyes were becoming heavy and the sweat on my arm made it hard to hold the strap down. I stopped and took a deep breath through my nose. I would have to be determined and strong. This asshole wasn’t getting any other pieces of me.
         Eventually the metal arm popped away from the strap and my right hand was freed. I immediately reached for my mouth and tugged hard at the tape I found there. It pulled the hair from over my lip like tearing Velcro.
         How long had I been here? A few days at least.
         As I sat up and reached for my legs a shriek of anger echoed across the darkness. The man had come back to find me escaping. I couldn’t see where he was coming from, but I heard his footsteps clomping towards me. He sprang from the shadows to my left and wrapped his gloved hands around my throat. He was strong.
         He pushed me back against the table and shrieked again. He no longer wore his surgical mask and his teeth were yellow as egg yolk. Saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth and was flung in my face with hard short breaths of anger and rage. His breath smelled horrible, I could only imagine something dead and rotting.
         I struggled to breath as his hands crunched the bones in my throat. I punched as hard as I could with my one remaining hand and fruitlessly struck with the remains of my other. I was beginning to blackout. I kicked and writhed but to no avail. My vision became blurred and the world seemed to slip away, down a long tunnel.
         ‘Dad?’
         ‘Yeah, son?’
         ‘How strong are you?’
         ‘Pretty strong, I guess.’
         ‘Could you beat up Superman?’
         ‘Man, I would kick Superman’s ass.’
         The sound of my son, laughing.
         I moved back through the tunnel, back to reality, back to fight a mad man.
         I reached up and grabbed his Adams apple and squeezed. His grimace turned from anger, to shock and then to pain. He reeled back from me but I held on. The table I lay on tilted on its legs and I went toppling over, pulling the man with me as I fell. My legs were still strapped in and now I was sideways.
         I pulled my arm in and held firm my grip on his throat. I pushed my left arm against his chin as I pulled his throat in the opposite direction. I could feel the blood pumping past my fingers desperately coursing to his brain. I squeezed harder and felt the ends of my fingers touch my thumb through the layers of skin on his neck.
         He clamp down on my left arm with his teeth and the blood flowed, hot and thick. I gritted my teeth and pulled harder on his throat. His cries of pains became soft gurgles and soon his arms slowed in their thrashing and finally became limp and lifeless.
         After some minutes I released my hand. His eyes rolled into his head and his tongued lolled at me past bloody gums. His skin became grey and a stench arose from his open mouth. 
         I reached down and untied my legs, with some effort. My hand had cramped and now my right arm was going numb. Finally, I was free. I crawled over the body and shuffled into the darkness. I was blind, for a moment, then I saw a line of green light. It was a doorway.
         I got to my feet and hurried to it. I took a look back at the man lying dead, half expecting him to be right behind me ready for round two. His body remained in the position I had left him.
         Pushing through the doorway into a haze of green light my eyes quickly adjusted and before was a sight I would never forget. Against the far wall a puzzle stood. Human body parts, different colors and shapes sewn together crudely like thick leather fabric. I walked slowly now, my heart racing as the thing stood motionless. As I approached my terror was intensified. The body, human. Was breathing.
         The torso gently rose and fell. A dark black tube poked out from the top of the neck and a soft sucking sound could be heard. The arms were whole except for the right was missing a hand, but the left did. I recognized it as my own. The scars and blemishes were unmistakable, and the tan line where my wedding ring had been confirmed it.
         Wires and tubes protruded from all over the body, the tubes running out and down into a large metal vat and the wires tracing the floor to machines and computers.
         One such machine I had seen on every medical drama ever on Television. It showed a heart rate.
         Next to the body, sitting on some kind of pedestal, a jar of liquid with tubes and wires snaking their way into a yellow liquid. Inside the jar.
         A brain.
         I couldn’t breath, my heart seemed to have stopped.
         What seemed like hours passed before I regained my composure and began moving forward again. With my right hand, I reached out to touch the abomination.
         As my fingers contacted to warm skin a shock brought me to the floor.
         The thing had moved.
         It had reacted to my touch and the fingers of my hand twitch and closed.
         I sat on the floor looking up at it all. The body, the brain, the machines all-humming and the tubes pumping. It was like a dream, but I knew I was not asleep.
         Slowly, I stood again. I looked around the room for anything I could use to destroy it all. In one corner several large tanks of oxygen sat. I pulled two of them to the center of the room and opened the valves wide. I hurried to the doorway where I had emerged and moved back into the room I had been contained. I shuffled past the tables and operating equipment to the far side. Against the wall, I found sinks, beakers, and all sorts of scientific equipment. I remembered from my chemistry class in high school the small metal torches one could use to heat different chemicals. I found two of these near the edge of the workspace.
         I opened their valves and searched for the igniter.
         Sparks from it blazed brightly in my eyes and listening for the gas, I moved it around, striking it.
A blue flame sprang from one of the burners and it seemed as if the whole room was alight. I moved the igniter over the second and secured another blue flame.
         I hurried back around and kneeled before the dead man on the floor. I removed his pants and his shoes and slipped them on quickly.
         I turned and looked at the back wall for an exit. There was a door. I reached for the knob and to my surprise, it opened with ease. I through the door open and flung myself through.
         Before I could shut it behind me an explosion pushed me hard against the wall on the other side of the door. The concussion was fierce and my head felt as if a truck had hit me. Fire hotter than I had ever felt swept across my body like water over rocks.
         I screamed.
         I managed to kick the door shut against the flames and quickly pushed down the dark hallway. Another explosion rocked the building and glass from high above me rained down cutting my head and shoulders. I hastened my escape.
         I entered into a large open area, what looked like a warehouse and ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I neared a wall of large metal, top rolling doors. A loading dock as far as I could tell. I gripped a long chain at one of the doors and pulled with all the strength I had left. It rose with some effort.
         I gave a second hard pull and I was soothed by the cold night air rushing past my legs. I dropped to my stomach and squeezed through the crack I had made.
         I looked back from where I had come and saw flames emerging from the doorway. I had destroyed the creature the demented man had made.  My hand had become a part of it, and in the end was as dead to me as the bastard that had brought me here. It was a part of a madness. A madness, which would never exist. The Frankenstein monster that would not know life.
         As I jumped down off the landing, I looked back into the darkness. The fire ate away at the rafters and shreds of fiery tinsel fell lazily to the floor. I walked backwards and thought of my wife, and my son, and how worried they must be. I had escaped something others had not. Tears rolled heavily down my face as I gazed deeply into the bright glow of the orange fire light.